 God creates the water and we dig wells. The enemy seeks to stop the wells by covering it with dirt. The wells become dry and the dry wells become prisons. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. The world you live in is dying out of thirst. The church is the well where rivers of living water flow to bring life to people. Breakthrough to finances, peace to families, healing to physical bodies and freedom to souls. Join us as we go digging. In that series, Digging Well, and today I want to specifically touch on the subject of tons, or gift of tons as one of the gifts that Holy Spirit has for us. And I want us to kind of dissect this gift and the baptism of fire, the feeling of the Holy Ghost, why it's important, and why do we need to exercise that gift of speaking in tons and praying in spirit. Amen. And so today we specifically dedicate this service after this message that we're going to pray for those of you that want to receive that gift. And those of you that still think like, oh, I can get by. Hopefully this message will convince you to hunger and thirst for the gift and desire. And if you do, the Bible says that you will receive it. Amen. And today we will pray, attend on the service, and you will receive that gift in Jesus' mighty name. And so the gift of speaking in tons, we receive Holy Spirit on the day of our salvation. Sometimes people, and I've made a mistake, and sometimes just the way even preachers worded that you receive the Holy Spirit when you're baptized in the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tons. That's not so. Bible says that we receive the Holy Spirit on the day of our salvation. That we are sealed by the Holy Spirit until the day of our salvation. And so when we are saved, when we are saved, we receive the Holy Spirit. But when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, we release the Holy Spirit. We release His power that was given to us. And in John chapter 20, verses 22, it says that Jesus, and with that He breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. We see that in that instance, disciples, they received the Holy Spirit in their spirit. But they were not speaking in tons yet. They were not baptized in the Holy Spirit. And that's why Jesus stole the disciples when He was leaving to make sure that you wait in Jerusalem because you're about to go to the next level. You're about to, you're about what you receive, that package is about to be unpacked. The package, you're about to be baptized in Holy Spirit and you're about to be unleashed. You're about to receive the infill of the Holy Spirit and be empowered by Him. And that's why in Acts chapter 2, we see in verses 4 that during the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon them and they begin to speak in other tons as the Holy Spirit enabled them. Also in the story of Saul, when he was persecuting the church, we see that he was going against Jesus. He was going against the church and Jesus met him and he rebuked him. And during the time Saul, he said, Lord, what will you have me do? And we see that he declared Jesus as Lord. Bible says when we confess with our mouth and declare that he is Lord and with the heart we believe that we are saved. So we see upon that moment, he received the Holy Spirit. How do we know that? Because when he came into the city and Ananias, he came out, he called him brother Saul. And we know that you can't be, he would have not been a brother unless he was born again. So through the scripture, we see that upon encounter with Jesus, Saul, he received the Spirit of God. He was saved. But then further down in Ananias, he prayed for him to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And Apostle Paul was filled and baptized in the Holy Spirit. So we see throughout the New Testament the importance of being filled and being baptized with evidence of speaking in tons. And it's kind of like this, like a couple of weeks ago, I was applying for a business credit card with American Express. And as I was going through application, I applied it after the application, said congratulations. You received an unlimited credit card for your business. I was like, wow, I mean, I was expecting maybe a couple thousand, maybe 10,000 of limit or whatever. But I received an unlimited credit line. And I was like, wow, that's so cool. But even though I had access now to the online portal, I could see the account number. I could access all the backend stuff. I had to wait for the card to come in. And once the card came in, there's a sticker on the card says, before using call to what? To activate it, right? So that's kind of how it is. When we get saved, we receive the Holy Spirit. Now, we don't have to have any prerequisites. We don't have to qualify. We don't have to have a good life. We don't have to be righteous on our own. We don't have to have a good standing. God just gives us just for free. He makes us righteous. We receive the Holy Spirit. But when we are filled and baptized by the Holy Spirit, it's like we're being activated. And now that unlimited resource and power is our disposer and a power works through us and flows through us like a river, amen? And with that, when we are baptized, when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in tongues, we have a great gift at our disposal that we could use to enhance our life and to fulfill the calling of God upon our life. And so today I want to kind of dive in and discover a few benefits. There are many benefits that we see in the Bible. But today I kind of want to focus on a few big ones. The benefits of having that gift and utilizing and speaking in tongues, praying in the Holy Ghost, praying in the Spirit, amen? First thing that I want to focus attention on is that speaking in tongues, praying in the Spirit, it enhances our prayer life. See, when we pray in our own language, we're limited. We're limited by our words. You know sometimes, have you been sometimes in a situation in a place where you had something to express, you had this excitement, you had some kind of a feeling they want to express, but your words just fell short. Have you ever experienced that? Because our language is limited. You know, knowing a couple of languages, I can see where in certain areas, a certain language can be more expressive and the other areas, the other language can be more limited. And those of you that bilingual, you can agree with me, right? There's some languages that could, some languages are easy to express certain things and other languages it's harder to express. The reason why God gave out His language, because He knew that our language is limited and our words are limited, our sounds are limited, so God has given us His language so that we will not be limited by our language, whatever language you speak. I believe, I read a statistic that said that an average person that speaks English knows 11,000 words, it used to be 14,000, but with each generation it's kind of decreasing. So unfortunately, but regardless of your capacity of your vocabulary, you might not be able to express your full desire, you might not be able to express the fullness that you feel on inside, you can express God or worship God the way you feel like He needs to be worshiped. God has given us His language, He's given us a gift that we can worship God, we can express to God on His language with no limitation in Jesus' name, amen? We're also limited by our head knowledge. We can pray only for what we understand and what we know. And how many of you agree that we are very limited? If you get yourself in a situation, you know, sometimes we look at the situation, we see no way out, logically we see no way forward, but this is where when you pray in a spirit, when you pray in tongues, Holy Spirit can pray through you, pray through a way out, praying a way forward for you, amen? Sometimes you find yourself in a situation and you're faced with either or option, because that's all you're limited to by your head knowledge, but when you pray in a spirit, there are many options that Holy Spirit can open and guide you through. You know, sometimes we find ourselves in a particular predicament and we begin to pray to God and we begin to cry out, God, please take me out of this situation and we begin to put God in a box because it's the only way He can take us out because that's our only option. But when we allow Holy Spirit to pray through us, when we allow Holy Spirit to pray in us and through us, God begins to open doors for us and we begin to move forward in Jesus' name, amen? Bible says that oftentimes we don't receive an answer to the prayer because we do not pray in accordance to the will of God. Sometimes our desires and our wishes and our prayers, they're not in alignment with the will of God. We think that this person is the best person to spend our life with and so we pray in God, let this person love me, let this person be with me. But God, but that's not God's will. Sometimes we get into a business contract, we think this business contract will take us to the next level but God sees the outcome of it and He sees where it's going to take our life and it's not where we should be, what direction we should be going. And so when we pray in spirit, when we pray in tongues, we always pray in accordance to the will of God because Holy Spirit is always in sync with the Father. We always pray exactly what needs to be prayed at the exact time. It's a perfect language, it's a direct line to God without any distractions, without any motives on the way. Holy Spirit prays through us and He knows us the best and He's leading us to our best life in Jesus' name. Amen Church? Oftentimes what happens is we pray reactively. What do I mean? We find ourselves in a situation, we find ourselves in trouble, we find ourselves in sickness, we find ourselves in a setback, we find ourselves at the end of a rope, at the end of the road and we begin to pray to God, God please save me. But when we pray in spirit, when we pray in tongues, we don't pray reactively, we pray preemptively. We begin to, Holy Spirit through us begins to cancel every plan of the enemy. He begins to cancel every attack that might be coming our way. We begin to prophesy into our future and begin to build our life and guide our life in Jesus' mighty name. See Bible says that our tongue is like a steering wheel. It guides our life. But the problem is like we discussed our tongue number one is limited and two, it's sometimes destructive actually. And so when we surrender our tongue to the Holy Spirit, He can begin to guide and lead us by praying through us into direction where our life needs to go. So then we don't find ourselves at the end of the road and asking God why and God has to rescue us and reroute us a different direction. When Holy Spirit prays through us, we are moving forward to the call that God and the purpose that God has for us. Amen. Holy Spirit knows the future. He knows things to come and He can be praying and He can preemptively begin to stop the things that will harm us and reroute us, move us, position us in a place where we will not be harmed but we will be blessed in Jesus' name. Amen. There's a man called Martin out of Georgia in USA. His testimony goes like this. He got saved, he got baptized in the Holy Spirit and received the gift of speaking in tongues. And one day he came home and he just had this urge, this serious urge to pray in the Spirit. You understand why? He just understood. He just kind of had a sensation that he would be praying for somebody but he didn't know who, what, or what and he began to speak in tongues, he began to pray intensely and he spent some time praying and then after some time when he was done praying he received a phone call, a phone call that no parent would like to receive and the phone call went like this. It was a state trooper on the other side that said that your daughter was in a severe car accident. The car is completely smashed and broken even the engine block got smashed, open and then crushed. And he said, your daughter is okay but he's like, in so many years of being state troopers he's seen many accidents. Going off the freeway at 80 miles an hour and hitting the tree, he said, I've never seen anybody survive like your daughter did and she's without a scratch. And of course father was relieved that his daughter was okay and he asked him, what time did that take place? When the officer told him the time that it took place he quickly, Holy Spirit, quickly reminded him it was the time that he felt the urge to pray in the spirit. So when we, when we pray in the spirit now you don't have to be, you don't have to wait for the urge and desire to pray. Apostle Paul says, I pray at will. So that means every time when you spend time with God when you have a fellowship with God you pray for your needs. Apostle Paul calls us to pray in international language but as well also pray in a spirit. Once you had that time, begin to pray in a spirit. Begin to set time aside in your day where you preemptively together with the Holy Spirit begin to go into your future, begin to go into your life where you begin to enter seed for things. Sometimes you know what you're praying for and sometimes you don't but nonetheless Holy Spirit is praying through you and he's working in your life in Jesus' name. Amen Church? So it enhances our prayer life. Let me put it this way. Police, medical staff, military, they have their own lingua. You know? Alpha Tango, out, blah, blah, blah, whatever those things, right? Eagle has landed, you know, bear has left the nest or whatever all these, all these fancy things but the reason why they have their own lingua is for them to better and more effectively to communicate. Same thing as police, they have their codes they call in each other, they don't have to explain these big alone sentences, they just call, you know, call in and say code 29. Everybody knows, I don't know if it's actually, don't hold me to it, I don't know that but I've heard something like that, okay? You know, everybody on the radio knows what's happening. They have codes for when a police officer is getting attacked or ambushed, they have codes for emergencies and so instead of describing the whole situation they just say this code or like in the hospital, code red. You know, everybody knows what's happening on the medical staff. No need to explain, we got this hospital mail to age 29 he's having this and this and this and that. Everybody in medical staff knows what that code means. So when we pray in spirit, God, Holy Spirit and the Father, they have these codes, they can communicate between each other, okay? To the outsider, it's nonsense. To the outsider, it makes no sense. Even to you that Holy Spirit prays through you, it might not make sense but Holy Spirit is communicating through heavenly frequency, friendly language with the Father and business is being done, things are being done on your behalf, in your life, in your destiny for the people around you in Jesus' name, amen? So it enhances your prayer life. Number two, I believe that speaking in tongues, frequently speaking in tongues, Bible says it builds our faith. In chapter 1 verse 20, here encourages us to pray in tongues because it builds our most holy faith and it keeps us in the love of God. See, faith is a crucial element in our Christian walk. Without faith, Bible says that it's impossible to please God. Without faith, we can't receive anything from God. Faith is a heavenly currency. It's what transports things from spiritual into natural. And so if we don't have faith, we won't function as we intended to. We won't be as efficient as we supposed to be as Christians. And so often times we are weak in our spirit because we do not pray in the spirit, because we don't pray in tongues, because Apostle Paul lets us know that when we pray in tongues, when we pray in the spirit, we are building up our faith. Often times we get struck by temptation, we get struck by fiery Bible says fiery darts of the enemy is because our shield of faith is small. Have you seen some of these old times? Different armies had different shields. Romans had shields where they covered their entire body. They could hide behind their entire body. But have you seen some of these armies that had a shield like this little round shield? You're like, what do I protect with this? Here, there, there, like it's not... How do you fight with that shield? And so sometimes I feel like that's how we are when we go into the battle. Our shield is nonexistent or small. We can't hide behind it. And so when we pray in spirit, we build our faith and we're strong this way. We can resist the temptations. We can resist the fiery darts of the enemy. We can resist negative thoughts. We can resist negativity because we are built up. So many times in my life when I felt discouraged, when I felt like, you know, it just fell down and in prayer instead of just whining and complaining to God, why is this not happening? Why is that not happening? But I would begin to pray in tongues and as Holy Spirit begins to fill me and it begins to bubble up in the spirit, it begins to flow like a river. Afterwards you come out like a lion. Like nothing is impossible. You feel built. You feel strong. You can take on the world. You can take on the day. Build your faith by praying in spirit, by praying in tongues. Amen. The other thing that, the other benefit that I didn't really hear anybody often speak and I didn't understand it, but as I start studying that more, I begin to hear more testimonies and realize that speaking in tongues also brings divine health and healing to our body. And it comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verse 4. It says that when we speak in tongues, we edify oneself. And when I heard that scripture, I always thought that it speaks of our spirit, kind of like similar to what we talked about, edifying, meaning building our faith. But it says here that we're not building our faith, but it says we're edifying ourselves. Not just our spirit, but our entire selves, our body, soul, and our spirit. See, I knew about the spirit. I figured about, like, the soul, you know, when you pray in tongues. I've experienced that, you know, you feel stronger, you feel more positive and all this stuff. I never thought in the aspect that it could bring healing and rejuvenation to our body. See, the word edify in that context, it's a Greek word, where's my thing here? It's a Greek word, that means to build a house, erect a building, repair or remodel. So when Bible says, Bible says that we are the temple, that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So here we're talking about that you edify, you build, you remodel, you repair, you edify oneself. That means you can receive healing in your body, rejuvenation, strengthen your body when you pray in spirit, when you pray in tongues. I heard this testimony of this person, this man, this gentleman, he had, so he was saved and he was baptized in the Holy Spirit and with evidence of speaking in tongues. And at the point of his life, he was discovered that he had an inch and a half cyst on his pancreas and it required a surgery and a surgery is very complex to remove cysts from pancreas. It's actually more complicated than doing a heart transplant. So obviously he was scared, he was afraid, he was, he was, you know, he was discouraged and as he was reading the Bible, when he went home, as he was reading the Bible, he came across this verse, in 1 Corinthians chapter 14-4, that as you pray in tongues, you edify yourself, you build yourself up. And he said, and he began to pray in tongues. He began to, for the next two months, he began intensely to pray in tongues. When he went back for his pre-surgery kind of exam, they discovered that his cyst shrunk by more than half. And the doctor said that there's no longer a need for surgery. They were obviously surprised that that happened. And he continued to pray and we believe that he received his full healing. But when we pray in the Spirit, when we pray in tongues, we also edify our body. Now, when we pray in the Spirit, we also, it also gives us power over fear and anxiety. In Jude chapter 1, we're storing the one that we read, it says that God will keep us in his love. In John, 1 John chapter 4 verse 18 says that perfect love casts out all fear. When we pray in the Spirit, when we pray in tongues, we are able to counter every fear and every anxiety that comes in our life. If you feel anxious, if you feel afraid, if you feel like that, you know, you're being overwhelmed, begin to pray in Spirit. Begin to counter that with the Spirit of God. Begin to pray in the Spirit and you will see how that fear, how God is going to begin to move you into His presence where everything else fades, where He's going to begin to fill you with His love by His Spirit. And His love will break away every fear, anxiety and every anxiousness. In Timothy chapter, 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 16, 7 says, therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us Spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind. You feel like you're losing your mind, you can't take it anymore. Begin to pray in your Spirit and you will see how Holy Spirit will begin to bring life and begin to cast out the fear and break the grip of fear and anxiety over your life in Jesus' name. Amen church. Amen. And last thing is that there's many, there's many things but the last thing that we're going to mention is gives you boldness to witness. Gives you boldness to witness in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 that we see when the Holy Spirit filled them that they will fill with power and boldness to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Every one of us are different here and some of us are more outgoing, some of us are more reserved and witnessing and approaching a stranger when God puts on our heart or talking to some person or even talking to a friend sometimes can be intimidating and hard to break that first barrier to begin to talk to them about Jesus, to share the gospel with them. This is where Holy Spirit comes into play. He knows where we, He knows that we are, we're not where we need to be. That's why Holy Spirit comes in us and when we pray in tongues He gives us boldness to be bold for the sake of Jesus, to be bold for the sake of the gospel, to spread His gospel all across the earth, to share the gospel with Jesus, with people about Jesus and bring, and bring the gospel to the people around us. Amen. There are many benefits. The Bible lists as it shows us is to pray, the benefits to pray in tongues, to pray in the spirit. Another, another one of the benefits is helps us to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, helps us to be sensitive to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. One other one that says that it helps us to tame and to control our tongue when we pray in the Holy Ghost tongue. And there's many other benefits, but I want us to make a determination today and reignite the desire and to be prayerful in the spirit, to allow the Holy Spirit to pray through us. Amen. To allow the Holy Spirit to work through us. Often times, you know what happens, we, when there's a conference where there's a man of God, woman of God comes to some place or comes to this church, we eagerly want to go and ask them to lay their hands on us and pray for us, right? And there's nothing wrong with it. It's all good. It's biblical. It's scriptural. We should do that. But Bible says the Holy Spirit wants to pray through us for us, right? While we sometimes put so much attention to have the man of God or woman of God to pray for us, but ignore the fact that in our everyday life, in our prayer walk, Holy Spirit wants to pray for us. God himself wants to pray for us. But we have to give him an opportunity to do so, okay? We have to give an opportunity to pray through us. We have to open our mouth. Apostle Paul says that, that pray in tongues as I will. You have to intentionally open your mouth and begin to pray in Jesus' name. Amen? And so quickly I want to talk about how to receive this gift. In Luke 11 verse 13 it says this, that by asking God, if you then, though you're evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heavens give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him? If you want to receive that gift of speaking in tongues, if you want to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, all you have to do is ask. That's that simple. It's that simple. All you have to do ask, and Bible says, the moment you ask, He gives it to you. The moment you ask, He gives it to you. So then what do you do then? You receive by faith that I have received it. If you ask God, immediately He gives it to you. Just like when you are saved, when you came to the front and you pray the prayer, say, Lord Jesus, forgive me all my sins. Receive me as your son, as your daughter. The moment you pray that prayer, you take it by faith that you are saved, right? You are saved right at the moment. In the same sense, when you pray God and ask God, fill me with the Holy Spirit in the same manner. You receive it by faith that I got it. Then what do you do then? You open your mouth and begin to speak. Bible says that they spoke as spirit filled them. Often times people think that, oh, you have to be overwhelmed. You have to be taken over. Holy Spirit has to just take over you and you're just going to come out automatically without your doing. That's not the way it is. Sometimes it happens, true, but most of the time that's not the way it is. Bible says they spoke as the Holy Spirit enabled them. So that means you have to open your mouth. You have to begin to make noise and syllables. And trust that the syllables, the noise that you're making, by faith that Holy Spirit takes it and makes sense of it to the Father. That by faith those noises and those syllables that are coming out of your mouth, that Holy Spirit puts heavenly meaning to it. And they make sense to God. He's pleased with it and he understands what you're saying to him. That's it. That's how simple that is. You speak and Holy Spirit enables. You open your mouth and the rivers of living waters begin to flow. It's not complicated. The hindrance of receiving tongues usually is because we overthink it. We think it's going to be something mystical, something so complicated. Just relax. Start making sounds. Start making noise. Stop producing valves. Holy Spirit will take over and begin to work through you. It's kind of like this. You drive a car every day. Most of you don't know how the car operates. Outside of put the key in, push the gas, put it in a drive and push the gas pedal. You understand how everything works in there. How the engine combusts, produces movement, that the movement is transferred into the transmission, then transferred into the axles, and then how the brake system works, how all that stuff. We don't know. We just get in there. We intentionally put our foot on the pedal and then the car begins to drive and then we're able to travel 70 miles per hour, which otherwise you wouldn't be able to do before, right? So you open your mouth. You begin to make noises, syllables, valves, and God begins to take over. Spirit of God begins to take over, begins to add meaning to it. And that's how you speak in tongues. That's how you receive that gift. Amen. Amen, amen, amen. So today we're gonna pray and we're gonna trust God that those of you that have not been activated, that have not received that gift, that today you'll have that gift, that today your prayer life will go to another level, that today your faith level, that your faith, your innermost will go to another level, you'll be built in faith, that today you're gonna go to another level in relationship with God. Amen. Just the last thing from a science standpoint, when Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist, he compared brain scans of Christian spraining tongues with Buddhist monks chanting in Catholics non-spraying and studied and showed that the front lobes where the brain control center went quiet in the brains of Christians talking in tongues, proving that speaking in tongues isn't a natural function of the brain, but it's a supernatural function of the spirit. So what I'm saying is that don't overthink it. Don't make it complex. You yield your mind to God. You come to God and say, God, I trust you, that what's gonna come out of my mouth, you're gonna add meaning to it, and I'm gonna be speaking in the hand of the language.