Unleashing My Inner Prayer Warrior - The Power of Praying in Tongues

Have you ever wanted something very badly? For others, that "something" seemed to come easy, but not for you.  I have! For years, I prayed to receive the gift of tongues, which is the spiritual prayer language described as follows: 

“The gift of tongues is a marvelous endowment of the Holy Spirit. It helps us communicate directly with the Lord. Speaking in tongues is the main avenue to our flying higher and swimming deeper in the things of God. It is a special prayer language that connects us with the glory of God, enabling us to pray in the Spirit when we do not know what or how to pray in the weakness and limitation of our human minds. There is no limitation to praying in the Spirit because it taps into the limitless mind of God.”  Quote from The Hidden Power of Speaking in Tongues by Mahesh Chavda (page 19).

I’ve never been a strong prayer warrior. So, I desperately wanted this gift to improve my prayer life. For many years, I would go forward during altar calls for this gift, yet each time I’d walk away disappointed. I couldn’t understand why God seemed to be denying my prayer request.

On January 24, 2013, God gave me a dream where I received my spiritual prayer language and it sounded like the most beautiful worship song I’d ever heard. I literally woke up from that dream declaring, “God, I want that!”

So on June 7, 2014, when a friend invited me to a local healing room for prayer, I went expecting my dream to be fulfilled. On the way to the healing room, God orchestrated events in such a supernatural way that He basically instructed me, through the Holy Spirit, to invite a coworker who needed prayer. When I got called in for prayer, nothing happened - again. They even called in the big guns, the main prayer warrior, and still nothing. Just tears. Mine. As I wept bitterly, this amazing prayer warrior hugged me and said, “I can see how badly you want this gift. But you are over-thinking it. You can’t get out of your own head and out of your own way. The gift will come when you least expect it.”  As I walked in dejection towards my coworker, I noticed she was literally glowing in excitement. It seems she received her prayer language! Did I mention she didn’t even come to pray for that gift? I was happy for her. Really. I was! I was just in shock at how God had orchestrated the events of the day for my coworker to receive this gift. I consoled myself thinking maybe my blessing for the day was just being used by God to bless someone else.

For the next year, I decided that maybe God did not want me to have this particular gift and that I should be grateful for the gifts I’d been given. I worked on improving my prayer life by praying scripture. I would find scriptures that applied to a situation I was praying for and I'd personalize the scriptures into prayers. Speaking scripture is a powerful praying tool and it adds muscle to your prayers. So I was content - kind of.  Still in a corner of my heart, I’d cry out to God and say, “I still want my dream.”

During 2014/2015, I started being plagued with anxiety and nightmares of End Time scenarios and persecution. So on June 27, 2015, I went to the healing room to ask for prayer to be released from a spirit of fear. As I sat in the waiting room, everyone else got called back for prayer except me. My sister, who had come with me, kept telling me to ask why I hadn’t been called. I didn’t want to rush God. As the hours passed and it approached closing time, I figured maybe it wasn’t God’s timing and I expected to walk away empty-handed. Truthfully, I was scared to be disappointed again. Suddenly, this thought ran through my head, “You have not because you ask not.” And then the Holy Spirit reminded me of the story of the Canaanite woman (Matthew 15:21-28). The woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter from an evil spirit and at first He seemed reluctant to answer her prayer request. But she persisted saying, “Even dogs get crumbs from their master.” He praised her faith and granted her prayer request. God was telling me, “Yolanda, are you willing to walk away that easily? Look at the Canaanite woman. She was willing to fight for her prayer request. Have faith like that, Yolanda. You have not because you ask not.”

I jumped right out of my seat and went straight to the receptionist. It seems she had misplaced my prayer card. So, right before closing, I was called in for prayer and who should appear but the main prayer warrior. He prayed for me to be released from the spirit of fear and than asked me if I wanted to pray to receive my spiritual prayer language. I laughed and told him, “You prayed for me last year and I didn’t get it. You said I was over analyzing.” He said, “That’s not going to happen this time. Do you want it?”

“YESSSSSS!!!!”

He told me, “Your part is to open your mouth and start speaking. The Holy Spirit will take over.” Once he started leading me in prayer, my prayer language erupted like a volcano. I had been released from the spirit of fear that was holding me back. God had used the last year to prepare my heart, mind, and soul. I basically was building my prayer muscles by praying scripture. To say I was ecstatic is an understatement. My dream came true!!! We serve an amazing God who does all things in His perfect timing.

So, why do I share this testimony with you? Because having my own devotional prayer language has changed my life. And I want you to experience that too.

There are 3 different ways to speak in tongues.
The first is to speak in tongues in a corporate setting, like a church service. The Apostle Paul instructed that there should be an interpreter so that others could understand the message being spoken. This type of speaking in tongues has, unfortunately, been misunderstood, misused by some, and caused people to fear or reject the gift. But, just because people are flawed does not make this powerful gift from God flawed.

In the Book of Acts, on the day of Pentecost, the apostles received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and they were filled with the Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. The apostles changed from men who feared persecution to a church body empowered with boldness and courage. These ordinary men, filled with an extraordinary Spirit, changed the world forever. We need to have that same power today in our churches to change our world. The enemy has tried to rob the church of this gift because he knows how powerful it is. We need to take back God’s gift and use it properly.

The second form of speaking in tongues is speaking a foreign language. Say for example, you are witnessing to someone in another country. God may give you the supernatural ability to speak in a foreign language so that they will understand the Gospel message.

The third form of speaking in tongues is in a personal, devotional, prayer language. This prayer language is to edify or build up your own spirit, a personal prayer language done in your own prayer closet. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14:5, 18 “I wish you all spoke in tongues… and I give thanks that I speak in tongues more than you all.” He was talking about his own personal devotional prayer language. In a corporate setting when sharing the gospel with others, he said it was better to speak in your plain language so that you are easily understood. But Paul knew the benefits of praying in the Spirit for his own benefit, to strengthen and build up his faith, to draw him close to God. That is why he desired for all Believers to have their own spiritual prayer language.

Here are only a few of the benefits of praying and speaking in tongues:

1. It helps us grow more intimate with God as we learn more about Him. (1 John 2:26-27; Revelation 1:10; 1 Corinthians 14:2)
2. It refreshes our spirit, as we become more in-tune to the Holy Spirit in us.
3. It places a spiritual covering and protection over our home, family, and us. (Psalm 91)
4. It changes the atmosphere around us from one of darkness and oppression to one of light and being in God’s glorious presence. (Jude 1:20-21)
5. We pray perfect prayers with perfect faith because the Spirit in us knows what to pray for because it knows all things. And we don’t interject our human limitations or doubts because we are praying in a language our brains do not comprehend.
6. The enemy hates when we pray in tongues because he cannot understand it. He cannot manipulate it or interject his criticism or accusations and make us have doubts. And what the enemy tries to steal is what we have to fight for!
   
7. Most importantly, the Holy Spirit helps us pray when we don’t know how to pray. He intercedes for us with “groaning too deep for words” and He searches the heart. I never know how to pray and when I’m in deep distress, having the Holy Spirit intercede for me is unbelievably comforting. (Romans 8:26-27)

I’m new to all of this because I’ve only been praying in the Spirit since June 2015. But I’m a woman on a spiritual mission and I’m ready to unleash my inner prayer warrior. When I turned 45, I unleashed my inner bombshell. My mission that year was to be comfortable in my own skin and to be bold for Jesus Christ. When I turned 46, I unleashed my inner zombie slayer. My mission that year was to learn how to fight spiritual battles through the light and power of the Holy Spirit. Now at 47, God has assigned me a new mission. I'm to unleash my inner prayer warrior by utilizing my gift of praying in tongues. The more I pray in tongues, the more confident I become in my prayer life. So, don't be surprised if the next time you see me, and you tell me you have a need or illness, I unleash my inner Prayer Warrior on you. God also has me on a mission to spread the message of this under utilized and misunderstood gift. If you tell me you want to improve your prayer life, I'm going to ask you to unleash your inner prayer warrior. So, you have been warned!

Here are some reference materials that will help you get started on this exciting transformation.

The book, The Hidden Power of Speaking in Tongues, by Mahesh Chavda, is a must read. It will make you crave the gift of tongues.

The video below with Sid Roth will guide and instruct you on receiving this powerful gift. And, just to encourage you to watch this video, I shared this video with a close friend of mine who had been hesitant about praying in tongues. She listened to message at home in her kitchen and decided to pray along with Sid Roth at the end of video. Her spiritual prayer language just erupted out. Now she is singing worship songs in tongues and I'm a little jealous of her! 

Also, watch this video: Sid Roth, "How to Instantly Be In Supernatural Protection".   This amazing teaching will explain the benefits of praying in tongues and the different types I explained above. It helped me understand how much the church today needs to be on fire for the Holy Spirit.

“The only requirement for being filled with the Spirit is to be thirsty for more of God.” Quote from Mahesh Chavda, The Hidden Power of Speaking in Tongues. (pg 45)

So, are you thirsty yet? Are you ready to unleash your inner prayer warrior? I pray you are because a spiritual battle of epic proportions is on the horizon and we need more men and women equipped for the battlefield.

Love,

Yolanda

For God is Spirit, so those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:24 (NLT)