 Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way. And may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again. Now what you're seeing here mentioned is body, soul, spirit. Say, I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. Now let me be very clear here, I am not by any means saying that man is a trinity. But I am saying that there are three aspects to man's nature. The human being was born with three aspects in regards to his nature. Now that is spirit and soul and body. Now I have these gentlemen standing up here to kind of give us this illustration of which is what. And I don't want to spend too much time on this but this is a foundational understanding. You are the spirit. So look like the spirit. It's hard to do, I know. So he's the spirit, you're the soul. And I'm sorry, Nick, but you're the flesh. But I know you're a man of the spirit but you're playing the flesh tonight, okay? Or the body, the physical body. Spirit, soul, body, say it with me. Spirit, soul, body. Spirit, soul, body, watch this. Your body is what we shall call your earth suit. It's your communication with the world around you. It's how you sense the world around you. It's how you experience interaction with other individuals. Every interaction that you have with another individual is grounded in the physical realm, at least on this side of eternity. Now, what's interesting here is that many people are under the assumption, the false assumption, that the physical body is somehow evil in and of itself. That the physical body is some wicked thing and where that confusion comes from is simple. When Paul the apostle writes of the flesh, sometimes translators translate the word flesh the same way for body and sin nature. So you have to look carefully at the context when you're reading. Sometimes when the scripture talks about the flesh, it's talking about the sin nature, the carnal mind, the tendency to do evil. And other times when it's talking about the flesh, the scripture is talking about your physical body. Now if the Bible says that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, how is it possible that your physical body is evil? It's not. It's what we choose to do in the body that makes it good or evil. It's what we choose to do in the body that makes it holy or unholy. So the physical body can be holy. It can be a carrier of the glory of God. I remember one time I was ministering in Kansas and I just got done preaching a service. I'm in the lobby and as I'm in the lobby, I saw this woman on the side of my eye. She comes hobbling into the service or out of the service. Her knee, something was wrong with it and it was very obvious because she had a very distinct limp. So she's limping by me and suddenly she stands up straight like something had surprised her. She looks around like this and she starts stomping her foot. She turns to me, reaches out toward me and starts running, screaming. I was terrified. I had no idea what she wanted with me. She comes, she starts shaking me. Like shaking me, screaming, what did you do? I had no idea what she was talking about. I was like, backing up like this, like, what are you saying, what happened? She said, I had surgery on my knee like two years ago for the last two years because they didn't do so well on the surgery for the last two years I've been walking around in pain. She said, when I walk by you right now something jumped off of you onto me and the pain left my body. I was shocked. I said, Lord, I didn't even pray for her. That's what I said to the Lord. I said, I didn't even pray for her. He said, and this is what the Holy Spirit said. He said, that's because I live in you and every so often I like to reach out and touch people. The physical body, say it with me. Say, I am a carrier of the glory. You are church, you're a carrier of God's glory. You don't have to go searching for atmospheres when you carry an atmosphere. The physical body, the physical body, guys, is not evil. It can house the glory of God. I was attending a Bible conference and I set my Bible down. Eric, you'll like this. I set my Bible down on the chair and I left. And then somebody brought me the Bible. They thought I lost it. They said, hey, I brought you your Bible. You left it on a chair. I thought, well, great, now I lost my seat. But this individual who was handing me the Bible was shaking. And I asked myself, what's wrong? This person said, I don't know. They said, when I grabbed your Bible I felt like a heat and a tingling sensation move up my body and now my body's trembling. It was the fire of God, guys. And that tangible touch of God's power is not just on me, it's on you too. It's the power of God. So the physical body can be programmed under the sin nature or the spirit. That's why the Bible says if you wanna walk in the spirit if you walk in the spirit you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. Why? Because you can only be programmed for one thing at a time. So the physical body was trained under an old mindset which is why the flesh has what's called the sinful cravings. The cravings came from an old way of living. But here's what happens when you begin to live in the spirit. The physical body begins to lose those cravings and the things that used to give you pleasure disgust you now when you even begin to think about them. That's what happens. Your physical body starts being trained under that new way to live, that new mindset. It's like an upgrade on your phone. You ever have a phone start glitching and then you get the new software updates? Suddenly it starts working better? Same thing, your physical body got a software upgrade. Adam 2.0, Christ in you. Old nature gone, new nature lives in me and now I'm transformed. So it's transformed under the mind. What does the Bible say? Be not conformed to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of the... Okay, you got it. That's it, program the body under the spirit. Now watch, that's a body. I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. Okay, so the body can be trained under the spirit. Now the soul is the mind, the will, the emotions and the personality. The mind, what you think, the will, what you desire, the emotions, what you feel, the personality, how you behave. This is where mindsets are established. This is where thought patterns are established. Let me show you something. In 2 Corinthians chapter 10, this is so powerful. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, I'm gonna go down to verse, I'll go down to verse three, watch this. We are human, what we don't wage war as humans do. We use God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons. What's the point of this? What's the spiritual warfare right here? To knock down strongholds of human reasoning. Guys, did you hear what that said? To knock down strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy, destroy false arguments. We destroy every proud obstacle that keeps people from what? Knowing, there's the mind again, God. We capture their rebellious thoughts and teach them to obey Christ. You know it in the King James Version as casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. The soul is where bondage is not necessarily owning you, but it's where bondage is influencing you. The mindsets of this world, the pattern of this world, we preachers need to stop taking our cues from the world and start taking them from scripture again. Can I just be real with you tonight? There's no power when you preach your political opinion. The Holy Spirit's not gonna back that. I've seen great men and women of God, anointed who carry the glory on their ministries the moment they start focusing on their politics, the glory lifts. And they become like a clanging symbol. Comment yes, vote yes, influence yes, but to let that take over who you are in Christ, your identity's not based there. Our mindsets are rooted in the word, not in the world. When you preach your opinion, you lose power because God will only back his message with power. He will not back your message. If I were to stand up here tonight and preach my opinion, there'd be no anointing on it. If I were to preach my thoughts on any one given subject, there would be no anointing on it. But when I stand up here and look to the word and look at you and say thus saith the Lord, there's power on it because it's what God is saying and he backs his message with his power. So those messages start to take root in the soul. They start to grip you, old thought patterns. You say, oh, I was raised this way. I go to a church where like 90% of the church members are ex-gang members. I'm serious. Steve and I go to the same church. There's a church and that's hyperbole, not 90%, but if the culture was a gang culture and they will tell you they came out of that mindset. I'm not talking that they would run the streets. I always kind of got weirded out when they would say like, these are my streets. I own them, I'm thinking like, okay. So like, that always confused me. I didn't know like, are you the mayor? Are you like, do we pay taxes to you? Like, how does that work exactly? But you know, that was the kind of mindset and I've seen firsthand people go from that gang lifestyle of violence and selling drugs and in and out of prison to being transformed and suddenly they're like the sweetest people in the world. Why? Because a stronghold was taken down from the mind. These are the type of people, I know guys who you even looked at them wrong they would cut you. But now people can come to the church and be rude to them, push them around and they kind of keep their cool. They're like, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna let that go. And I watched that transformation because that's a stronghold in the mind being uprooted. And this is why, this is why church we have to allow the Holy Spirit to work in our minds. Now the mind has all of those problems, the lies we believe, the deception we allow ourselves to believe, the opinions we allow ourselves to have have to be checked by the word. So this is still the soul, the mind, the will, those things we desire, emotions, some people live by their emotions, man. One day they walk into the church, I'm ready, I'm gonna fast, I'm gonna do what God tells me to do. And then by the next week everybody there is a hypocrite, I couldn't stand what happened there and so and so looked at me wrong and there's all of these things and excuses that begin to impede their spiritual growth because they're living by their emotions. Now before you were saved, the Bible says you were dead in your sins, right? Means there was no spirit. Before you were saved, all you were was body and soul, existing but not living, animated but not alive. And you would go living from the body and the soul and that's why all you lived for was what you physically craved and what your emotions told you to do. You only lived out of two outer shells of who you are. You lived in the body and the soul. You lived for cravings and for self. It's where selfishness came from. If you thought something made sense to you, your whole path of life was placed on that which you thought mattered, on that which you were taught to believe, on that which the world instilled in you but now the Bible says, and notice by the way Jesus said, don't fear the one who can destroy just the body. He says fear the one who can destroy both the body and the soul in hell. You notice he doesn't mention the spirit there and he doesn't mention the spirit there because those who are alive in the spirit are destined to heaven. Now when you were dead in your sins you did not have a spirit. You were just body and soul. But when you were born again, Jesus said that which is born of the flesh is, that which is born of the flesh is, but that which is born of the spirit is, so you were born once but you must be born again of the spirit. You see what I'm saying? You didn't have that sense. Now the spirit is your connection with God. First Corinthians chapter two, verses 10 through 12, tell us about our connection with God and how the Holy Spirit searches out the deep things of God and he communicates the deep things of God with your spirit. First Corinthians chapter six verse 17 says, he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. I have one spirit with God. I'm not battling two natures. It's not me and some other guy. You have one nature. And you may say, then why is it sometimes that I sin? You realize that when you sin, you're acting in a nature that is not yours. You're acting against your nature. Some people say, you know when I sin, I feel like a fake. I say, I got good news for you. You are a fake. When you sin, you're not a fake Christian, you're a fake sinner. That's not who you really are. You're not a wolf in sheep's clothing. You're a sheep trying to put on wolves clothing. So my sin nature, I'm not even identifying with that anymore. Catherine Coleman, a powerful woman of God had, you go read her biography. That woman went through so many things, some her own fault and she would admit that. But she actually went through a divorce. Many people don't know this about Miss Coleman. She went through a divorce and years later, obviously God restored her. She went back into ministry. Woman comes up to Miss Coleman years after her divorce and she comes to her and she says, how can you call yourself a woman of God? How can you stand up there and preach? She just started to berate her with her past. And Miss Coleman said, oh my dear, I believe you have me confused for someone else. I don't identify with that person anymore. Paul says, when I sin, I'm not the one sinning, but sin living in me. Is he saying we're not responsible for it? No, he's saying I don't identify with it. Now here's how it works, okay? So here, righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. That's the kingdom of God. Some of you know the verse, most of you know the song. But righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost. Flow through the spirit. Power in the spirit. Anointing in the spirit. Love in the spirit. Romans five, five, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The gifts of the spirit flow through us by the Holy Spirit. All of these things available, the desire to pray, the love of God's word, the boldness for evangelism, the power to live holy, all of it here. Here's the problem. Most Christians live like this. What's going on here? What happened? Nothing, okay. Okay, you look forward. The flesh winked at the soul. Okay, so that's how they work too. Now here's the problem. Spirit flowing. Everything you ever need. What if, remember, we read it. 1 Corinthians 6, 17, I quoted it to you. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Do you realize in your spirit you already know God? This is why people ask me all the time, how is it possible that God would give us the Holy Spirit and then why would there be a need after God gives us the Holy Spirit to receive the Holy Spirit? When is the Holy Spirit received? I'm here to tell you tonight that the baptism with the Holy Spirit, as I will show you, is not about you getting more of God. It's about God getting more of you. So here's spirit, power of God is flowing. Everything, I am one with Christ in my spirit. This is why I say that revelation is not when you gain new knowledge. Revelation is when that which you know in your spirit manifests in your carnal understanding. So I already know that. First John 2, 27, you've received an anointing. In the spirit, you don't need a man to teach you. Now, some people think that that literally means they don't need anybody to teach them. What it means is you don't need anybody to teach your spirit, your spirit already knows. Otherwise, why would God give us the gifts of the teacher? Why would God give the church the teacher if nobody needed to be taught? Okay, so that's not what it's saying. It's saying you know God in your spirit. I know him, I'm one. I'm walking in perfect fellowship with him. The problem is that we face the exterior things in life. On the outside, right here in the realm of the flesh, finances do that. Relationships, your health, things at your job, the concerns of this world, your many responsibilities, your connections with your loved ones, all of it, including your emotions up and down. Now, here's the problem. Because we are attached to the exterior things of the world, the fact that the world is chaotic means that there's chaos produced in the soul. This is why some of you can be so excited to be a part of ministry, the church, evangelism, worship one week, and then the next week want nothing to do with it. This is why your prayer life is inconsistent. This is why you can't devote to the word of God every single day. You know why? Think about prayer just for a moment. You can volunteer down at the soup kitchen. You can volunteer for the media ministry. You can volunteer to play on the worship team. You can volunteer to do all sorts of things and you'll love it, but the moment you start to pray, your flesh starts to squirm. And the reason your flesh starts to squirm when you pray is because prayer is the death of the flesh. But we live like this, not wanting to tap into the spirit. And so our emotions go up and down. Our mental state goes up and down. We get our cue. We start to think like the world thinks. God give us to sermon in this hour. We start to think like the world thinks. We become so focused on the exterior that our joy begins to dwindle. Now you've been praying, God, give me a breakthrough. God, help me feel better. God, I wanna be on fire again. And you think God is gonna come and change everything on the exterior. He does, sometimes. God, fix the marriage. God, heal my body. Father, bless me financially. Nothing wrong with praying those things, by the way. But the issue is this. You're waiting for God to transform your life through some dramatic transformation of the exterior circumstance. You're looking for your breakthrough from a large external transformation rather than a small internal shift. When you live like this facing the spirit, it doesn't matter what happens out here because I have joy in here. I can't shake me. There was a powerful man of God who was riding on an airplane, taking a nap. Suddenly, the pilot realized that they were lost and running out of fuel. Everyone in the cabin started to panic. I knew this man personally. He has since then gone home to be with the Lord. But they came to him and they said, look, we need to, we're gonna do an emergency landing. We have to find where we're landing. They woke him up and he says to them, he said, Jesus slept through the storm. I will sleep through this. And he went back to sleep. Now they ended up landing safely. They found where they needed to go. I knew that powerful man of God. Like I said, he's gone home to be with the Lord. But powerful, powerful man of God, unshaken by circumstances in this world, unshaken. I know another man who was actually in a plane crash, survived. Everyone was panicking on the plane. He told me this and the people there can testify. As the plane is rolling, he's laughing in the spirit. I kid you not, the people on the plane said this. Everyone survived, thank God. But he says the thing, they crashed and they're rolling. And he's praying in the Holy Ghost, laughing as they roll. And he came out without a scratch on him. I'm hearing about these people laughing when airplanes roll. I'm thinking, man, I start to get stressed when I start to wonder if the financial responsibilities will be met. I remember one time there was a need in the ministry. Oh, I was stressing. And I knew we were up against the deadline. And I said to the Holy Spirit, please, please, please take care of this need. Speak to someone, anyone. I'll take it from even someone who doesn't know you, Lord. Just anybody. What does the Bible say? Wealth of the wicked is laid up for the righteous. I'll take it. So I'm praying this. And the Holy Spirit says to me, I'm gonna take care of it. I said, thank you, thank you, thank you, but Lord, please send it, please send it, please send it, please send it. I'm gonna take care of it. I said, thank you, Lord. And I kept praying for it. So this gentleman comes, he's a wealthy gentleman. And he just decides, hey, I'm gonna write you this check. And he just writes us a check. The moment he wrote that check and I was holding the check in my hand, ah, I felt relief. Because I knew it was enough to cover what we needed and then some. I said, thank God, you came through again. And the Holy Spirit rebuked me. He said, why is it that when I give you a word, you're still filled with fear? But when a man gives you his signature, suddenly you have peace. I felt like this, babe. I was like, I don't know if I wanna know the voice of the Holy Spirit right now. He'll rebuke you, man. He said, when you can trust my voice as much as you trust a man's signature, then you know you're walking in faith. What does that represent to us? The exterior living in the flesh, worried, attached to all of these things when God wants you to face the Spirit. When you live like this, you cannot be shaken. When you live like this, it doesn't matter what they say, it's not gonna work you up. It doesn't matter how they treat you because you're gonna still have the love of God and the strength to treat them properly. You see, when you treat people well who mistreat you, it says more about you than it does about them. So I can live like this, you can live like this if we would simply face the things of the Spirit. This is why I believe that Paul the apostle wrote. Think about what they were facing, persecution, all of these things. Paul the apostle writes, I'm pressed, but I'm not crushed. I may be persecuted out there, but I'm never abandoned. And then he says this, you can even strike me down, but I can never be destroyed. I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. Thank you, gentlemen. I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. You say, David, okay, what does that have to do with the baptism of the Holy Spirit? Now that you've got the foundation, I'll take just a few minutes to teach this now. When is the Holy Spirit received? At salvation, you receive the Holy Spirit in your spirit. At baptism, you release him into the soul and body. John chapter seven, verse 38 says this, out of your belly or out of your innermost being, that's what Jesus said, your innermost being, not out of your soul, not out of your body. He said, out of your innermost being, your spirit will flow rivers of living water. And the scripture tells us very clearly that when Jesus talked about the rivers of living water, he was talking about the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the baptism with the Holy Spirit is when that river within me floods everything around me. Baptism takes place when I'm submerged. You see, the same thing is true of a ship, a boat. A boat stays afloat because it's in the water, but the water is not in it. The moment the water gets inside the boat, the boat becomes baptized. Some of you have the Holy Spirit. If you're a believer, Romans eight, nine tells us that if they don't have the Spirit of Christ, they don't belong to God. Many of us in this room have the Holy Spirit. The question is, does the Holy Spirit have you? I wanna be filled with the Holy Spirit. You can't be when you're full of yourself. We need to empty ourselves and allow that water, that river of living water to flow from deep within. The baptism with the Holy Spirit is not rain from heaven. It's a flood from within. When that water begins to overflow from my spirit, it fills the soul. When that water fills the soul, my mind is transformed. My emotions are lifted. My heart is changed. My mindsets begin to adapt to the word of God. My personality even begins to become transformed because the soul is being overcome by the floodwaters of the spirit. Now something very amazing happens. In Romans chapter eight, verse 26, the Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit pleads for us, pleads for us. I love that phrase, pleads for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. And he prays for us according to God's will when we don't know what to pray. That verse in Romans eight, 26, is not talking about the gift of tongues, but follow this. A lot of preachers use that and they say this is the gift of tongues. It's not, it's not, it's not. Romans eight, 26 is not the gift of speaking in tongues. It's the source of the gift of speaking in tongues. Think about the fact that people will travel all over the world to have a man or a woman of God lay hands on them. Think about the fact that we have people who pray for us, who love us. He pleads for us. That means he fervently prays. If you could see the Holy Spirit praying for you, you would see him face down on the floor. Tears streaming down his face. His voice would shake the room. I dare say he would be pounding his fist to the floor, pleading for you as he prays. With groanings, that means a deep, urgent groan. Something that comes from deep within his heart. If you've ever heard a mother pray for her child. If you've ever heard a father pray for his child. If you've ever heard a grandparent pray for their child, you have a little taste of what it's like when the Holy Spirit prays for you. He prays and he pleads fervently for you. The one who knows you like no one else can know you. Praise for you like no one else can pray for you. And he prays what? According to God's will, meaning he bends you toward God's will. He inclines you towards God's will. He works on your character and nature and like the potter shapes the clay, so the Holy Spirit's prayers shape you. That's what's happening inside. The Holy Spirit pleading with groanings that cannot be uttered. That's Romans 8, 26. Now, 1 Corinthians chapter 14 verse 14 tells us that when I pray in tongues, I'm praying in the spirit. Praying with my spirit, with my spirit, with my spirit. What does that mean? It means I'm not praying from my flesh. I'm not praying from the physical body. You know what praying from the physical body is called? Desperation. I'm gonna really come against some mindsets right now. We've created a culture of desperation in the church because we don't understand our oneness with God. Shout a little louder, jump a little higher. Maybe God will hear you. Get a little, as if God is in heaven going, had you just jumped one more time, I would have been able to pour out my spirit on you. Servants beg, strangers beg, sons come boldly. I don't wanna pray from the flesh. I don't wanna pray from my emotions from the body or the soul. Now, what am I saying? Is it ever wrong to dance around? No, I love watching Steve and Mark Tazuma get up here and worship. I love that Steve shouts and jumps and dances. I love that you shout and jump and dance. And the Bible says to do that. But we don't do that because we're trying to work up a connection with God. We do that because we're celebrating the fact that we've already been connected with God. Imagine how much time you'd save in prayer if instead of begging God to hear you, you simply believe that he already does. I don't pray to connect with God. I pray from connection with God. So I'm not praying from the physical body. Yelling, shouting, that's an expression of what happens on the inside. If what's happening on the inside overflows to that, let's do it. But if I'm doing that to try to get something to happen in my spirit, it's praying in the flesh. I get phone calls. I prefer texting now. It's just much easier unless I need an answer right away and then I call. But sometimes I'll get a call and I like to go visit South Orange County and I drive down there to the spectrum. If you're over there on a Thursday, you'll find me and Steve. Just drive out there and just, we meet there, we go over notes, we tape Thursday nights. So Thursdays we go to the spectrum and we just writing notes and scriptures and he works on his music and we're just talking about what we're gonna do that night for the filming. But as I go through Orange County sometimes, I go through those spots where the signal starts to drop and I'll get these phone calls from people and invariably, sometimes the calls will cut out and they just talk, sound like that. And when they start doing that, please don't tell this to anybody I know, just don't tell anybody, but I'll just hang up on them and I'll let them think the call dropped because I'm not gonna deal with the whole back and forth. But what happens is, what happens is they start yelling. So they go from sounding like, so they just go from quiet gibberish to loud gibberish. You see, they're trying to make up for what they lack in connection with volume. You know where I'm going with this. You see in my spirit is where I'm connected. Do you know why at the worship events and at the conferences they tell you to be desperate? Because it makes the worship team look good. I'm just gonna be real with you. Because if you don't respond loud enough to their gift, they're offended. I told you I'm gonna preach truth tonight. Do you know why churches will build a culture of desperation? Because they wanna be able to brag at the atmosphere. Because they wanna be able to point to the hype and say, look how God is moving. So they make you feel like you have to work for it. Oh, I'm preaching this thing right now, exposing religious spirits. The problem is, they're trying to make up for in the flesh what's lacking in the spirit. Because when the spirit starts moving, you don't need to force them. You don't need to coach them. You don't need to make them feel guilty for not making you look like you know how to lead a worship set. That's why I thank God for the worship ministry of Stephen. You just get out here and you have a good time. But you see, and it's not just worship leaders, it's pastors too. Preach a whole sermon on shouting so that they can show a two minute clip of everybody's shouting and show off how wonderful they responded to their sermon. Guys, I'm exposing some real things here. See, these are things that are deep now. And the problem is it's all from the flesh. It's from the flesh. And they create that culture because they wanna create hype. They wanna create hype because they're lacking the move of God. So you're not desperate enough. You need to shout. Shame you for not responding to their gift. Oh my gosh, I can put the Bible, I can put the word away and I preach this thing. And the problem is we do it too to ourselves. We exhaust ourselves because we love that. We love to work ourselves in a frenzy. The problem is that's why you don't like to pray. You don't like to pray. You don't like to read the Word because you think that when you come, you're gonna have to work to connect with God. How discouraging is that? Jesus said when you pray, say our Father, he didn't say God, do you hear me? I imagine the conversation goes something like this. God, do you hear me? Yes, I hear you. Lord, please listen. I'm listening. God, do you see me? I see you. God, I need you. I'm here. Our pleading church, church, church. Our pleading is too loud. You're so worked up about having an encounter with God that you're preventing yourself from having an encounter with God. Praying from the flesh. Worshiping from the flesh. Trying to create something that's not there. Instead, instead. Romans 8.26, Romans 8.26. He pleads. He prays. He pushes with groanings that cannot be uttered. First Corinthians 14, 14. When I pray in the spirit, when I pray in tongues, I'm praying in the spirit. When I pray in tongues, I'm praying with the spirit. First Corinthians 6, 17. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. What does that mean? What does that mean? It means that when I pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit is praying for me through me. The Holy Spirit is praying for me through me. Now let me be clear. Because I don't want to get you confused now. If we're up here saying, come on, shout into God with the voice of the term, that's good, shout. First saying, come on, let's dance, dance. If we say, pray in the Holy Ghost, go for it. I'm talking about the mindset that says that's needed in order to connect with God. You hear me? But when I pray in the spirit, those prayers that are taking place in my spirit come up out of the spirit, move past the soul right onto the body, and it comes out as tongues. There's a story about a little girl and my aria now. I say one, but Jess, she's how old? A year and five months. So she knows the months. Dads tell you how old they are in years, moms in weeks and months. My little girl is 15 months old right now. It's too fast, too fast. It's true. I hate cliches, but it's true. Anyway, so I wanna teach her to pray. So this story really inspired me. There was a story of a father who was teaching his little girl to pray. And each night he would kneel by her bedside with her. Say Lord, she would say Lord, bless me, bless me. They would go through it, she would repeat them. So night after night he does this, he trains his daughter. And one night he decides, I'm gonna let her pray on her own, see how she does. So he lets her go into her room, he tucks her in, he leaves and she's now saying her prayers by herself. He leans over, cups his ear and starts to listen in on her little prayers. And she's not praying, she's singing A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And I won't sing the rest, but that's what she was singing. She was singing the alphabet. He thought, okay, that's adorable, it's cute. He leaves her to it. The next night he comes back, he's walking by. Puts his ear to the door. Here's it again, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. Now he's getting concerned. I hope my daughter knows how to pray. How long should I let this continue? Am I misleading her to allow her to pray this way? So eventually he goes in. He says to the little girl, listen, sweetie, when we pray to God, we have to actually pray. She says, I am praying, dad. She says, no, no, sweetie, you're not praying. You're singing the alphabet. She says, daddy, I am praying. Says, what do you mean? She says, well, I just sing the letters to him and I let him arrange him how he wants. That's praying in tongues. When you surrender, the Holy Spirit fills. The Holy Spirit can only feel what is empty. If you're praying words that you fill with your meaning and intentions and purposes, the Holy Spirit can't fill those words with his own meaning and purposes and intentions. But when you pray in tongues, kente, robo, sende, robo, bobo, sente, rien, de boco, I'm releasing a sound and faith with nothing I'm attaching to it. Perfectly pure. Coming from my spirit. Leave it to God to hide the power of praying in tongues behind such a childlike act. Leave it to God to require such faith in order to access such power. Do you know why people don't pray in tongues? Because they don't know what it is. And I'm gonna tell you why you can't pray in tongues. You can't pray in tongues one word, ego. Now, when I say ego, I'm not just talking about pride because ego is self. People are under the impression that when the gift comes upon them that the Holy Spirit is gonna come down, grab their tongues, start moving and they're gonna start praying in tongues. It doesn't work that way. You control the gift. That's in the Bible. Read all of 1 Corinthians 14. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul the apostle writes a whole chapter on how to control the gift of tongues. Why would he instruct them to control the gift if the gift could not be controlled? So here's really what it comes down to. You have to have the faith to speak it out. It's as simple as I'm gonna surrender syllables and sounds to you and I'm gonna have the faith that you are going to add your meaning to them. People come up to receive the gift of tongues. They'll say things like in their head, someone's praying from. They say, oh, that's just me. I'm just repeating someone. Is that a demon I'm getting? I'm thinking a demon you're getting. I mean, if praying in tongues, let's just say we're all wrong and praying in tongues is not biblical, which it is. Let's just say it, okay? Humor, the cessationist for just a minute. To say that it's demonic? I mean, people laugh, people cry. That's an emotional expression with no words. Why wouldn't we say the same of tears? Well, you know, when you're crying, you don't really mean anything and the enemy could enter. It's nonsensical. When you're praying in tongues, what's wrong with releasing sounds and worship to God? It's like humming or crying. It's an expression with no words that you release to him. But the bottom line is this, if you want that gift to flow through you, you have to speak the syllables and sounds. I'll give you one more illustration that we're gonna pray, amen? I don't like when people drive, you know, you're on the freeway. I used to not care when I was single, I would drive and I'd see cars drive by real fast. I go, whoa, did you see that? What was that? Oh, it was a Ferrari. Oh, it was a Lamborghini. Oh, wow. Now somebody does it, I get mad. My daughter is in the car. What are you doing? But I always found it interesting that people take pride in how fast their car is. Like, we know that's not you going that speed. It's your car. Like, we don't go, wow, that guy, he's so fast. He's pushing a pedal down. He's not really doing much. I'm not that impressed. I just never understood that. Look at how fast I went. I covered that distance in a shorter amount of time. Like, that's supposed to impress us all. And I want to tell them you're not the one driving. You're not the one going that fast. You're just pushing your foot on the pedal. When you pray in tongues, it's the same thing. You're not praying in the spirit. You're just giving him the sounds. That's the gas pedal. When you do that, you start to release the sounds by faith. The Holy Ghost takes over. This message was taken from my latest book, Praying in the Holy Spirit. Order now at amazon.com. Thank you for watching EncounterTV. Don't forget to subscribe and click the notification bell. Also, help us spread the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Make a one-time donation or become a monthly supporter by clicking on the donate link now.