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Part 4 of 7
God's Greatness Inside You: Growing Through Prayer in the Spirit
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When we think about Jesus, we often imagine him wielding his miracle-working power from childhood. But the Bible tells us something different. Luke chapter 2, verse 40 says, "And the child continued to grow and become strong in spirit." At age 12, when he confounded the teachers of the law, Luke 2:52 tells us, "Jesus kept increasing... Jesus grew."
It's hard to wrap our minds around this: Jesus, 100% man and 100% God, had to grow. He had to keep growing stronger. We see this pattern continue into his adult life. After his water baptism in Luke 3:21-22, where he received the Holy Spirit, he didn't immediately begin preaching. Instead, the Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted, and he overcame. Only then, after satisfying certain conditions, did he return in power and begin his ministry.
What can we learn from the life of Jesus? Jesus grew into what he was born to do.
All through his life we see him growing, increasing, becoming stronger until he attained a particular height that triggered the start of his ministry. This is the principle we must embrace: In order to access everything God has given us, we must be committed to spiritual growth.
2 Peter 1:3 says, "By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him. In view of all this, make every effort to respond." Verse 8 continues: "The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be."
Ephesians 3:20 puts it powerfully: "Now unto him who is able to do exceedingly more abundantly above all you can ask, think, or imagine, according to the power at work in you." Here's the key insight:
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Think of it like someone cooking a large pot of Nigerian jollof rice. Your ability to consume is determined by the size of the plate you present. If you bring a small bowl, you limit your portion. But if you bring as big a plate as you can, you can consume more.
Peter says we have to take the responsibility to respond. It's my responsibility to respond. I believe that Christianity will be frustrating until we commit to spiritual development and growth.
Here's a profound truth I heard: "Aging is inevitable. Growth is optional." No matter how much anti-aging cream you apply, aging happens. But growth? Growth is optional. And here's something even more critical: "If the version of God you are worshipping doesn't require growth, you are not worshipping God."
God will accept you as you are. Come as you are. But you cannot stay as you are. Come as you are, but you have to be committed to grow past where you are.
When we say yes to Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us we become brand new inside. Ezekiel 36:26 says God will give us a new spirit. Here's what that means: When we say yes to Jesus, nothing else in our life changes except our spirit. We get a new spirit, but our soul—our mind, will, and emotions—remains the same. That's why our mind has to be renewed.
Our bodies will be replaced by a glorious body at the end of times. The tension of the believer is this: You have a body that cannot yet express your true nature. Giraffes have the body to express their nature. Lions have the body to express their nature. But when we go to heaven, we're going to get bodies that are unlimited in expressing what is inside us.
But we are changed on the inside. That new creation, that new spirit, is blessed with every spiritual blessing in Ephesians 1:3. According to 1 Corinthians 2:16, that new spirit has the mind of Christ. It has the mind of Christ.
According to 1 John 2:20, that new spirit has been anointed by the Holy One and knows all things. Your brain does not know all things. Your mind does not know all things. But your spirit—if you have said yes to Jesus—your spirit knows all things.
Your new spirit has the full complement of God's identity and heaven's supply. The full download. But there's a problem.
Galatians 3:26 says, "For you are God's children through faith in Jesus Christ." Paul continues in Romans 8:16: "The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."
If you're a child of God, you have an inheritance. But here's the problem. Galatians 4:1 says: "Think of it this way. If a father dies and leaves an inheritance for his young children, those children are not better than slaves until" they grow up. The difference between you actually experiencing what belongs to you and living a mediocre, frustrating Christian life is one concept: Grow up.
One of the most powerful ways we grow up is by praying in the spirit. 1 Corinthians 14:4 says, "So, a person speaking in tongues helps himself grow spiritually."
1 Corinthians 14:2 explains: "For he who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men, but speaks to God, for no one understands him. However, in the spirit, he speaks mysteries."
When we speak in tongues, we are speaking to God. Our spirit is having spirit-to-spirit communication with God. The more we speak with God, the more we function like him, the more we function with our spirits, the closer we come to him.
There are four knobs for building intimacy with any person:
If you exaggerate any one of them, you will grow intimate with the person. When we pray in tongues, that's exactly what happens. We're having spirit-to-spirit communication with the Holy Spirit. The more we pray in tongues, the more spiritual we become. The longer we pray in the spirit, the more our spirit comes alive, the deeper we go spiritually.
How does this happen? We are forced to focus on God. Our minds are set on things above. We are forced to focus on God. Be careful about the quality and quantity of media you consume, because when you consume rubbish, all that noise begins to come back to your mind when you pray. It begins to distract you.
Speaking in tongues catalyzes spiritual growth. Jude 20 says, "But beloved, building yourselves... That word means to build upon, to give constant increase, to make progress. Make progress on your faith. Rise like an edifice on your faith. Go higher and higher on your faith. This is a present active tense. You have to keep doing this. Keep rising. Keep growing. Keep building until your spirit rises above your soul.**
When anxiety rises in your soul, when worry rises, you pray in the spirit until your spirit grows stronger than the noise in your soul. Just keep growing.
There are two things that are serious hacks for growing spiritually. Acts 20:32 says, "So now, brethren, I commend you to the word of his grace. I commend you to the word which is able to build you up."
Jude 20 says you build up yourselves on your most holy faith in the spirit. Scripture and the Spirit are two of the most important elements of building up yourself, of growing spiritually.
Read up. Grow up. Pray up. Grow up. Scripture and the spirit. Read the word of God and then pray in the spirit.
1 Corinthians 14:4 says, "He who speaks in a tongue edifies." That word means to build a home, to erect a building, to be a housebuilder. How do you effectively increase the capacity of a house? Brick on brick. Wall by wall, level by level.
When we pray in tongues, when we speak in tongues, we're adding new bricks and levels to our spiritual life. We're adding new rooms, new space to experience what God has for us. We're activating dormant dimensions, dormant things in our spirit that have been lying fallow.
Speaking in tongues increases discernment. 1 Corinthians 14:2 says, "For one who speaks in an unknown tongue does not speak to people, but to God. But no one understands what he's saying. He speaks mysteries, secrets, hidden things."
When you're speaking in tongues, God understands what you're saying, even if you or any other person might not. Don't let anybody deceive you out of that because they said it's gibberish. Babies cry and parents know the different meanings of different cries. You may not understand French, but French is still a language. You're talking to God. You're not just talking to God—God doesn't just understand what you mean. God says you're speaking mysteries to him. You're saying things that your mind cannot comprehend.
1 Corinthians 2:7 says, "We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom of God." And 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, "The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. Our physical senses cannot make sense of what we are saying, but that does not make it an illegitimate form of communication."
1 Corinthians 2:9 says, "Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man. That means physical senses, eyes and ears, cannot comprehend. Your thoughts, your soul, your mind cannot think out what God has in store."
The sad thing is that most Christians stop there. God works in mysterious ways. Maybe I'm not supposed to know. But read verse 10: "God has revealed it." It is not hidden. It's just put in a realm that you have to go find it. He reveals it to us through the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit searches the deep things of God. "No man knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of man. No man knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God that we might know the things that God has freely given us. You received the Spirit so that you might know, discern, to understand, to learn."
1 Corinthians 2:14 in the Message translation says, "Your spiritual self just as it is by nature can't receive the gifts of God's Spirit. Spirit can only be known by Spirit. God's Spirit and our spirits in open communication, in open communion, spiritually alive, spiritually fortified, spiritually grown—we have access to everything God's Spirit is doing."
The Bible says in verse 16, "Isaiah's question was, 'Is there anyone around who knows God's Spirit? Anyone who knows what he's doing?' And that question has been answered. Christ knows what God is doing. And we have the mind of Christ."
That means I have access to the thoughts of God.
We have received the Spirit of God. We have received an agency that helps us decode these coded messages. We have received a means of unpacking what God has hidden, what he's revealing—the capacity to capture revelation. We have received the technology to know what God means. The technology to know what speaking mysteries means. Not because God hid it just to hide it. He hid it so that you can go find it. He hid it in a realm where you have to go find it.
Psalm 77:6 says, "I called to remembrance my song in the night and with my spirit I meditate and my spirit searches. Because I'm praying in the spirit, my spirit is searching. It begins to speak mysteries, the hidden wisdom of God."
How do I know the meaning of what I'm saying? When you read 1 Corinthians 14, it's a guide, an apostle's guide, a pastor's guide to how to use the gift of tongues in a public setting. The Corinthian church had gotten this gift and begun to abuse it, speaking in tongues to each other. Paul writes them and ends the chapter saying: Do not stop anybody from speaking in tongues, but let me give you context on how to use it.
There are two dimensions of speaking in tongues: a congregational dimension and a devotional (personal) dimension.
1 Corinthians 14:2 says: "If you have the ability to speak in tongues, you will be talking only to God. Since people won't be able to understand you, you will be speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit, but it will all be mysterious. But the one who prophesies strengthens others, encourages them, comforts them. A person who speaks in tongues is strengthened personally. But he who speaks a word of prophecy strengthens the entire church."
We can deduce that speaking in tongues and prophecy are two sides of the same coin. One profits me; the other profits other people.
Verse 5: "I wish you all could speak in tongues. But even more, I wish you could be useful to other people by prophesying. For prophecy is greater than speaking in tongues, unless someone interprets what you are saying so that the whole church can be strengthened."
Verse 13: "So anyone who speaks in tongues should pray that he gets an interpretation," because we're talking about a public context. If I pray in the spirit with the intention of blessing other people, of encouraging other people, I must pray for interpretation to come from me or some other person. It's not only for myself because I'm trying to address people.
Verse 18: "Paul is speaking, 'I thank my God that I speak in tongues more than you. But in a church meeting, I would rather speak five words of understanding to help others understand than 10,000 words in an unknown language.'" What's he saying? If I'm coming to address you, I need you to understand. But if I'm praying for myself, I don't need interpretation.
So when I raise a prayer point and I say, "Everyone, let us pray for our country, our national leaders, our state leaders," and I begin to speak in tongues, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to God. When it's time for me to summarize the prayer, then I'll come back in Jesus' name. But that other language—I'm not talking to you. You can be eavesdropping on something that doesn't concern you.
For the public, tongues, interpretation, understanding are needed. For private prayer, I don't need interpretation. As I pray, God begins to give me thoughts, paint pictures in my mind, suggest things to me. Call this person. Do this. Do that. Reach out to this person. Talk to this person.
I had a conversation I wanted to have with a member of our staff. That morning while I was praying about it, God said, "Today, say this. These are the words you're going to use." I had the conversation with him and he said, "It's just interesting you're talking about this today because I was asking God this about it." As I was praying, I wasn't thinking about him—he's a dear brother—but he jumped into my heart and God told me what to do. It's understanding. God tells you what books to read, what videos to watch. You begin to get ideas.
Now, the danger of consuming rubbish is that the devil can also suggest things to you. I heard a stupid song. Somebody asked what song it was, and I told them it was a nonsense song. I heard it, and then everybody decided to use it in all their reels. I'm praying in tongues one day and the song just comes. I said, "What kind of nonsense is this?" It takes like 10 minutes to wash it out. Then 15 minutes later, boom, it's back again. Because of the rubbish I consumed, now I have to weed my way through that garbage.
You're here praying for a new job and listening to news that says the economy is bad. How do you plan to hear effectively? We come out saying, "I feel like God said..." Yes, it might be God, or it might not be God, because your soul is open to anybody in the spirit.
Sometimes you're saying things and you don't know what you're saying, and God won't give you the interpretation because he doesn't want you to know. Let me give you a practical example.
There was a school I thought we were going to stay at. I went there for three months, working in the field, praying in the spirit. I'd never launched a church in the US. I'm just praying in the spirit. I'm going around praying with headphones so I don't even know how loud I was. God says, "Run to the rock." It was in Burtonsville, at Paint Branch High School. I said, "This is where we're going to be. I feel like God is calling us." I didn't want to come to Rockville because people are bougie—I love you now, but then I was scared. Things were expensive. I liked Burtonsville because it was east. Anyway, someday I go to say "run to the rock." I found out that behind the school there's actually a rock with the inscription "the rock." I saw it one year after.
So here I am praying. Two years after we launch, a friend calls me and says, "Hey, we're coming to Montgomery County." That's good news because I've been praying for other churches to come. It's better to combat hell when you have people beside you. So I'm praying and praying. He says, "We're going to launch this church in Montgomery." I said, "What school are you using?" He said, "It's Paint Branch." Then God tells me, "That's who you were praying for."
I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, so those three months you were praying for them." As I was trying to launch a church, just imagine if I knew. I would have offed that prayer. I would have focused on the church I'm trying to launch. But they're telling me I'm praying for another person's church—not finished launching my own! But he delayed it and then told me that's what you were praying for. It was such a confirmation, such peace. That's what you were praying for.
He will lead you in understanding what it is you're praying for. As you pray, your sensitivity goes up. You grow in stature enough to begin to pick things—ideas, thoughts.
I was trying to connect to God to preach after preaching three services here. The Holy Spirit told me how to pack the night before. I usually go to a certain city, go to the hotel room, rest, and do my thing. The night before, God said, "Pack as if you're not going to go to the hotel." I said, "What do you mean?" Pack as if you're not. So I folded my clothes nicely.
Saturday—or Sunday we leave—the airport guy says, "Bring out your iPad and begin to review your notes." Wally was resting beside me. I wanted to rest too; I was tired. God said, "Get your iPad out and begin to review your notes." I was teaching about finances and I was going to teach like a revival. No, it's not the same mind. God said, "Make the turn now." I'm wondering what's going on. We land. This person takes us straight to church. No hotel. No nothing. Like I literally went to the restroom, wore my clothes, everything, and came out and went on stage. Why? As I was praying in the spirit preparing for the meeting, God began to give me instruction: Do this. Do that. Fold your clothes. Those level of details.
It increases discernment. And interestingly, it also begins to stimulate what I call supernatural coincidences. Things just begin to happen for you. You leave the company just before it goes down. You meet an ex-high school classmate at a birthday party, exchange numbers, begin to talk, and then you're married. It was just supernatural coincidence.
David, after he's anointed, the Bible says the Holy Spirit came upon him from that day forward. How is it that somebody in the room when the king knows he needs a musician—somebody knows you play an instrument—says, "Hey, I know somebody." Supernatural coincidence.
The day you decide to bring bread for your brothers, obeying your father's instruction, is the day and time you hear Goliath insulting them. Notice in that story, God never tells David to fight Goliath. Supernatural coincidence. That's what your life feels like. I was just in the room. Somebody just told me. I just heard about it. That's what you took care of in the spirit.
Somebody said, "Common sense produces common results." Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. The steps of the righteous man are ordered by God. Jeremiah 10:23 says, "Lord, I know the way of a man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps." We don't. Common sense will fail you. Go to God for the simplest of things.
Speaking in tongues catalyzes spiritual growth. Speaking in tongues also increases discernment.
Speaking in tongues increases carrying capacity. Jesus spent about three and a half years with 12 men (11 of them there). He demonstrates the gospel of grace—that it is not just Jews that are accepted by God through keeping the law. Gentiles also, people who are non-Jews, are accepted because of the sacrifice of Jesus as prophesied.
Jesus teaches this, or rather, demonstrates it—but does not explicitly teach it. The Bible says in John 16, Jesus tells his disciples, "There are more things I want to teach you, but you cannot bear them. When the Holy Spirit comes, he will lead you into all truth. He will give you the capacity to bear more truth."
Acts 2: the Holy Spirit comes. Acts 9: Paul is saved. In 1 Corinthians 14, we know that Paul speaks in tongues a lot. Here is a man who speaks in tongues a lot. In Galatians 1, the Bible says that Paul says the message that he preaches—he got the message of grace. Paul is the one up until Paul; the arguments the church were making were that Jesus was the Christ, the prophesied Christ. There was no real application other than miracles and signs to our personal life.
But Paul comes and grabs a revelation that the people who walked physically with Jesus could not grab. The Bible records he spent three years in the wilderness. I can see him praying in the spirit, studying scripture—praying in the spirit, studying scripture—to the point he had the capacity to download, understand, and articulate a dimension of the gospel that the people who walked physically with Jesus could not capture.
Why? Capacity in the spirit. He captured it.
If you've ever had luggage with that extra zip—where you fill up the luggage, you're sitting on it, pressing on it, doing everything—if you want to contain more comfortably, what do you do? You unzip a space that was already there. When you bought it, it was already there. All you have to do is engage it to be able to carry more.
Here's something profound. How does a young, beautiful, short woman give birth to a child in a space that somehow keeps growing enough to hold whatever the weight of the child will be, however tall? Have you ever seen a baby born that can... well, you look at the baby, and looking at the woman it came from, you go, "How? How were you able to carry this thing, this 1-year-old baby?" Because there was an infrastructure in them that had the ability to expand as needed based on what was growing.
You can carry more than you're carrying now. You can do more than you're doing now. You can be a wife, be a mom, own a business, have a coaching school, be a podcast host, have a conference, be a kingdom financier who leads a small group. You can do all of it. It's all about capacity.
It's capacity. You don't have to live the life where when you start something new, the other one falls. Because you're trying to squeeze it into the same space. You can take some time and pray in the spirit and begin to grow capacity. Begin to grow sensitivity.
How does that work? You make decisions faster. What takes you two months to think about, strategize, and talk to 17 people about, you just have it immediately. You spend less time experimenting and making errors. You're making decisions accurately and quickly because of the capacity to discern.
Do you understand me? Aren't you tired of making mistakes in relationships? Aren't you tired of dating nonsense people? You should have looked them in the eye and known. You should have known. So I'm looking at her and saying "No. Can we do coffee?" "No, not even water. Why? Capacity."
Most of us spend our capacity doom scrolling. Any post you see is information you house. Think of how much information you're housing that you did not intend to house. But as you pray in the spirit, you begin to open up dimensions on the inside of you. Begin to get new ideas and how to execute them. People to talk to. Things begin to happen around you.
There's a group of people I began to speak with, and I told God, "Okay, I've never related with this kind of people before. Give me the capacity, because if you don't, I'm going to go there and be a fool and say what I'm not supposed to say because I don't have the capacity to relate with people of that class."
God has given you the capacity for more. All you have to do is engage this infrastructure and make room.
Everybody say: I have room for everything God has called me to do. Say it again: I have room for everything God has called me to do. Stand up on your feet. You can be all that. You can be everything God has called you to be and more. You can do whatever it is that God has laid in your heart and nothing fails in your hands.
Let's read this confession together:
I have the mind of Christ.
I know the thoughts of God.
I know everything I need to know.
The hidden thoughts of God are revealed to me.
As I pray in tongues, my discernment is sharpened.
I discern direction from God and I walk in it.
As I pray in tongues, my capacity increases.
I have more wisdom, revelation, and power.
Nothing fails in my hands because I have the Holy Spirit.
I can be everything God created me to be.
I can do everything God calls me to do.
I am a sign and a wonder to my generation.
I speak in tongues every day.
I make room for more in my spirit in Jesus' name.
