If it's fire, it's got to look like fire, feel like fire, smell like fire or something.
Welcome to another Raising Home Fire Secret Place training session.
Those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of
the Almighty.
And our prayer and our vision for this time is that you would be further equipped, that
you would be taken into a deeper experience of the secret place, into a deeper personal
connection with God, and that you would experience what it's like in a deeper way to come under
the overshadowing of God.
Bill Johnson says, whatever overshadows you will come out in your shadow.
And you know, the book of Daniel, Daniel writes this, he says, those that know their God shall
do great exploits.
And so our prayer is that you would grow in your knowledge, not just your knowledge about
God, but your intimate, personal, experiential knowledge of knowing God.
And so enjoy this session.
God bless you.
Hey guys, welcome to another Secret Place training session.
I'm really excited to be sharing with you today again about something that has deeply
blessed my life.
I want to talk to you about a principle, a practice that I practice in my prayer life.
I practice in my secret place time and just in life in general that has dramatically blessed
me.
It's one of the core practices of my life, something that I, one of my favorite things
to do, actually.
I can't overestimate how much this, what I'm talking to you about today has blessed me.
It's amazing.
And I know it will bless you too.
I want to talk to you about the gift of tongues.
And then I want to talk to you about the interpretation of tongues.
The gift of tongues is one of the nine gifts of the spirit that comes to you when you are
baptized in the Holy Spirit.
If you don't know about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, two things.
Read Acts chapter one and two and ask God to baptize you in the Holy Spirit.
When he baptizes you in the Holy Spirit, you receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
And the gifts of the Holy Spirit are gifts that are kind of like a musical instrument.
You can get given a guitar, but that doesn't mean you know how to play the guitar.
You practice the guitar, and as you practice the guitar, you get to enjoy the guitar more
and step into the benefit of the guitar more and more.
And same with the gifts of the spirit, they actually need to be practiced.
And you grow in the gifts of the spirit, including the gift of tongues and the interpretation
of tongues.
And so I'm not going to talk about the other nine gifts.
I'm not going to say any more on that.
I'm just going to go straight into talking about the gift of tongues and the practice
of the present, the practice of the gift of tongues that comes to us when the Holy Spirit
comes to us, when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit.
So what is the gift of tongues?
The gift of tongues is the language of the spirit within us.
It's a spiritual language that the Holy Spirit gives us when we are baptized in Him, and
it's our spiritual language.
It's a language that doesn't come from our mind.
It's a language, and it's a language that has, of course, words that come out of our
spirit through our mouth.
And it's the gift of a spiritual language, our language before God, our spiritual language.
In the last session, I talked about the nature of words and the power of words.
I talked about the fact that your tongue is a sword and your words are a weapon.
And we talked about the power of our declaration.
We talked about the fact that the primary function of words is not to communicate, but
to create.
And every time we speak a word, the word that is spoken carries within it the substance
of which it speaks.
Our tongue has the power of life and death.
If we speak words of death, there is a substance of death that destroys, and it's actually
in the words that are spoken.
But if we speak life, then there is a substance of life, there is a substance of the life
of which we speak within the words that are spoken.
Our words are not just information, they are literally substance that create.
And the same is true of the gift of tongues.
When we speak forth this language that the Holy Spirit gives us, we're speaking the words
of the Spirit, and the words of the Spirit, the words of the Holy Spirit are coming through
our mouth out of our tongue, and the words of the Spirit out of our tongue carry on them
the substance of the Spirit.
And so when they are spoken, the substance of the Spirit, the substance of the Holy Spirit,
the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is released into the atmosphere around us.
And I want to speak to this for a few moments.
I want us to just turn to one current thing.
It's 14, verse 2, and it says this,
Paul is speaking to the Corinthian church,
and he says,
"'For he who speaks in a tongue
"'does not speak to men, but to God.
"'For no one understands him.
"'However, in the Spirit, he speaks mysteries.'"
And we'll drop down to verse 4,
"'He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself,
"'but he who prophesies edifies the church.'"
So this is powerful to me, two things.
First thing is this, in chapter 4,
sorry, not chapter 4, in verse 4,
"'He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.
"'The gift of tongues is a gift that God has given you
"'to build yourself up in the Spirit,
"'to build yourself up in faith,
"'to build the fortress of union with God inside of you.'"
If you're feeling discouraged, if you're feeling deflated,
if you're feeling down,
then God has given you a gift to build yourself up again,
to edify yourself so that you can stand up on the inside
and be strong.
The gift of tongues is a gift that strengthens you
from the inside out when you put it into practice.
So that's one reason to use the gift of tongues.
The next thing is that when you speak in the Spirit,
you speak forth the mysteries of God,
according to verse 2.
What that means is,
and I noticed that what happened in my life
when I received the gift of tongues,
and I started to practice the gift of tongues,
and I would spend hours, and I still do often,
spend hours speaking in tongues in this prayer session,
is what I began to notice is I began to notice
that revelation started coming to me.
I began to understand things about God
that I didn't understand before.
I began to read scriptures.
God began to speak to me.
The voice of God became clearer.
I began to just know things about God and know God
and experience God in new ways
that seemed to be closed to me before this time
that all of a sudden opened to me.
It's almost like a whole new world opened to me.
And it's like that world keeps getting bigger and bigger
every day as I speak in tongues.
I noticed that there is a substance, there is a life,
there is a reality that fills the atmosphere around me.
And I can recognize that this principle is taking place
of the words that I speak carry within them substance,
carry within them the life of which is spoken.
And when I speak the words of the Holy Spirit,
when I speak the spirit language,
His words are coming out of my mouth,
and they are carrying His substance from my mouth.
And so the substance of the Holy Spirit
and the mysteries of God,
the things that He is wanting to reveal to me
that I have not yet understood
and they haven't yet been revealed to me,
revelation, in other words,
wisdom and revelation from the Holy Spirit
is being released into the atmosphere around me.
Now my atmosphere is becoming full of revelation,
becoming full of the life of the Spirit,
becoming full of the wisdom from the Spirit,
becoming full of the substance
of everything God is wanting to and longing to
reveal to my understanding so that I can walk in it.
And so I noticed that as I began to speak in tongues,
my experience with God,
my intimacy with the Holy Spirit,
and my understanding of what He was saying to me
began to dramatically increase.
And I noticed that the more I speak in tongues,
the more that dramatically increases.
I wanna read to you a quote now by John G. Lake,
one of my heroes, who, if you don't know John G. Lake,
just look up John G. Lake
and read some stories about John G. Lake.
He is, he changed the world.
And he said this,
"'Tongues have been the making,"
and I can, I just wanna put a note on this.
I can relate to what John G. Lake is saying here.
I mean, I would say the same thing about myself.
"'Tongues have been the making of my ministry.
It is that peculiar communication with God
when God reveals to my soul
the truth I utter to you day by day in my ministry.
Many times I climb out of bed, take my pencil and pad,
and jot down the beautiful things of God,
the wonderful things God,
sorry, the wonderful things of God
that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart,
that He talks out in my spirit and then reveals to my heart.'"
And I can, like I said, relate to that quote.
I can relate to those words.
I could say them about myself too.
Every, in fact, well, possibly every, if not,
definitely most of the messages
that God has given me to share,
the revelation that I have from God,
all of those things really have come,
and I can relate them to the use of the gift of tongues
and what I've been talking about in this session
relating to the substance of the Spirit
being released through the words of the Spirit.
So hold that there.
I want to talk about the interpretation of tongues now
because I love what John G. Lake says in this quote.
He says,
"'The things, the wonderful things of God
God, that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart.
that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart,
When we speak in tongues, we talk out the things in the spirit, and the interpretation
that He talks out in my spirit and reveals to my heart,
of tongues is, I think, when those things that have been spoken out are then revealed
to our heart and also, I would say, revealed to our minds.
So I want to read to you something else that the Apostle Paul says.
I read this, and when I read it, I caught something that the gift of tongues changed
my life.
But then when I caught this next thing, it went to a whole other level, and the transformation
just got so much more ferocious and dramatic in my life.
And I practice this, like I said, all the time now.
I practice the gift of tongues, and what I'm about to talk about is the interpretation
of tongues, and I put them together.
So 1 Corinthians 14, verses 13 and 15 says this.
Now I'm going to pull something out of this in a second, but in verse 13,
Therefore, let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.
So Selah, if we speak in tongues, let us pray for an interpretation.
Let it not just stay unrecognized, unexplored substance in the atmosphere around us.
Let us explore the substance that has been released through the words of the Spirit spoken.
If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding, or my mind, is unfruitful,
what is the conclusion?
I will pray with the Spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding, or with my mind.
I will sing in the Spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding.
Or when he says understanding, he's meaning his mind.
And so I realized that what the Apostle Paul was doing, he wasn't just praying in tongues
and leaving his mind unfruitful.
He wasn't just praying in tongues, praying in the Spirit, speaking in tongues, using
the gift of tongues.
He wasn't just doing that and letting his mind wander all over the place.
That he had practiced and he had learned, and through reason of use and through practice,
he had learned to keep his mind fruitful and keep his mind engaged and keep his mind in
a place of prayer.
And of course, he talks about song too, in a place of song.
When he speaks in tongues, he's keeping his mind fruitful.
And so I read that, and I realized, man, there's something about that that I'm going to explore.
So I began to explore that principle of keeping my mind engaged as I'm praying in tongues.
And I began to learn something that I now practice all the time, and that is that when
I pray in tongues, I will also engage my mind in conscious prayer.
So it might sound like this out loud.
If anyone was listening to me pray, it might just sound like,
shakarabasitili maromosukatelevaranimemetisitibaradebababaka marabatasakataradababaka.
That's my spiritual language.
But with my eyes closed, I won't let my mind wander.
I will start to frame words in my mind.
I noticed that when I speak in tongues, I'm not framing words in my mind.
My mind is idle, but I can kick my mind into gear without stopping speaking in tongues.
So my spirit is speaking in tongues, and then in my mind, not out loud, but in my mind,
I'll start to pray in my mind.
So in my mind, like I said, not out loud, but in my mind, I'll start to just—and I
normally just start with thanking God.
It's just in my mind, but these are the words that would be forming in my mind.
God, thank you for this.
Thank you for being faithful.
Thank you for being kind.
Thank you for being awesome, God.
Thank you for just the way that you've been speaking to me lately.
Thank you, God.
And maybe I'll hone in on a promise.
God, thank you that when I speak in tongues, the substance of the Spirit is being released.
Thank you, God.
And I'll start to just thank God.
I noticed as I began to engage my mind in prayer, as I was speaking in tongues, initially
it was a little bit of hard work, and I had to use a lot of concentration and focus and
intentionality to frame prayers in my mind as I was speaking in tongues.
And it did take some effort.
It did take some—and it didn't feel—I felt a little bit clunky.
But then I noticed—and this is still what happens to today—is that if I can see through
the time of focus, and if I can be faithful in that first few minutes of just keeping
my mind focused in prayer, what happens is there's a point where my mind clicks into
gear.
It clicks into a track.
It finds the rut in the Spirit that the gift of tongues has already carved out for my mind
to lock into.
And I go from trying to formulate prayers in my mind, to all of a sudden, my mind starts
to get flooded.
revelation, with thoughts from God, with the voice of God, and with the reality of God.
And I'm not trying to come up with prayers anymore.
Now I have been overcome with the thoughts and with the reality and with the revelation
of God.
And it is now flooding in, not just subconsciously, but consciously.
I am awakening to the truth of God that is in the atmosphere around me.
And it is an amazing experience.
And I pray that that will be your experience as you engage in this practice and in this
activation today.
I like to put it like this, it's like when you speak in tongues, you are releasing an
ocean of the reality of God, of the mysteries of God, and of the truth of God.
And I don't know how many of you love diving.
I love diving.
I love exploring the ocean.
I love spearfishing.
And I love everything that the ocean has to offer.
There's so much to explore.
There's so much to enjoy.
There's so much in the ocean.
And when you engage your mind in prayer, it's like putting goggles on in that ocean.
And with the goggles on, you can explore so much more.
You can engage in so much more of what's in the ocean.
And you can really see a lot clearer than you can without the goggles on.
That's what it's like when you engage your mind, you wake up to and you become conscious
of the reality of God's revelation and of the mysteries that have been released around
you.
And you have a sharper focus and you begin to engage in those mysteries and in those
revelations to a degree that you never could unless you had engaged your mind.
And so what we're going to do now is we're going to go into an activation, and I'm going
to take you through an activation where we're going to spend some time speaking in tongues.
And then I'm going to take you through a process of engaging your mind in prayer as you're
speaking in tongues.
And this activation is going to be something that we're going to obviously do right now,
but it's going to be something that as you practice it and as you do it more, you'll
become more and more fruitful in it.
And so I hope you enjoy this activation and God bless you.
Awesome guys.
Well, welcome to the activation.
I hope you enjoyed that session.
We're about to go into this activation now and you're going to, you're actually not really
going to need a pen and paper in this activation.
It's going to be a very simple activation.
The first thing I want to say in the activation is this, if you have not been baptized in
the Holy Spirit and you don't yet have the gift of tongues, the first thing I'm going
to ask you to do is to spend some time, put some worship music on, read Acts chapter one
and two, and ask God to baptize you in the Holy Spirit.
Ask Him to give you the gift of tongues and stay with them in that place of prayer until
you know you have received that.
That's number one.
Number two is the first, sorry, well, it's number two.
So the second point of this activation, after you've received the gift of tongues, many
of you have already received the gift of tongues.
Some of you have been speaking in tongues longer than I've been alive probably.
So for you, it might be the first part of the activation.
For others, it'll be the second.
I want us to right now find some space, find a place where you can just freely speak in
tongues for five minutes.
And we are going to not softly, but we're going to boldly speak in tongues for five
minutes straight.
So I want you to set a timer on your phone or on your watch or whatever way you can just
have a look at the time if you need to, but set a timer for five minutes.
And the first part of this activation is I want you to boldly and consistently pray out
loud in tongues, which of course is the only way you can pray in tongues, pray out loud
in tongues.
You don't have to worry about engaging your mind yet, but pray in tongues for five minutes
straight.
You can put, like I said, put an alarm on your phone and pray in tongues.
And I want you to do that for five minutes.
Awesome.
So you're going to be feeling pretty good now.
You've been praying in tongues for five minutes straight, which is just, to me, I love this.
I absolutely love it.
What I want you to do now is we're going to go into another five minutes of tongues so
you can get ready to set a timer or just keep an eye on the time for five minutes.
You could, of course, go longer, but go for at least five minutes.
And what I want you to do is I want you to do your best to engage your mind.
Gauge your mind in prayer.
So to do that, you can go a couple of different routes.
You could go—a good way to start is just thank you, Jesus, and think of as many things
to thank Jesus for in your mind.
So as you're praying in tongues, you're thanking Jesus.
Maybe there's a scripture that you've been meditating on.
Pray into that scripture in your mind as you're praying in tongues.
Or maybe there's something else that's on your heart.
Don't let it be a need at the moment, but let it be either thankfulness, praise, or
a meditation on some kind of revelation that you've been looking into.
What I want you to do is for five minutes now, another five minutes, is pray in tongues
out loud, but try—and for some of you, it's going to feel like going to the gym, and it
might feel like this actually might be a little bit of an effort for you, and it might take
quite a lot of focus and concentration to be able to do this and not be distracted and
let your mind go idle.
But I want you to try and keep your mind active in prayer for five minutes, at least five
minutes.
Okay, so hopefully that's enough explanation.
Go for it.
Awesome.
Well, that's so cool.
Thanks for doing that, guys.
Some of you may have experienced, and some of you will have experienced, the experience
of you were engaging in prayer in your mind, and then you felt the revelation start flooding
in, and you stopped having to make up prayers in your mind, and prayers and revelations
started to flood your mind.
Some of you will have already recognized that shift of gear within that five minutes.
Some of you may not have, and that's okay.
Don't worry.
But what I want you to do is my homework for this activation today is I want to challenge
you and I want to ask you to spend 10 minutes every day this week speaking in tongues.
Spend the first five minutes just speaking in tongues, releasing the atmosphere of the
ocean of the reality of God, the mysteries of God into the atmosphere around you, the
substance of the Spirit into the atmosphere around you.
And then for the next five minutes, I want to encourage you to begin the practice of
learning how to engage your mind—well, you've started today, but continue that practice
of engaging your mind in prayer as you're praying in tongues.
And I want you just to take some notes and to recognize when you start to feel that shift
of gear, when you start to feel the spiritual revelation and the mysteries of God start
to be unveiled and revealed within you as you're keeping your mind fruitful and praying
in tongues and see how that begins to change your life.
So God bless you.
That's your homework, and I pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next week.