“When your fathers tested Me, they tried Me, though they had seen My work. For forty years I loathed that generation, and said they are a people who err in their heart, and they do not know My ways. Therefore I swore in My anger, truly they shall not enter into My rest.”’” Psalm 95:9-11; Hebrews 3:9-11.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Do not only seek My works, seek first My ways. Many people only come to Me to demand a work, but what they are seeking seems to escape them because they do not understand My ways. They think they must flatter, badger, order, cry, show Me why they qualify by good works, or show Me why their need is so great, and I could go on, but that just tells Me they do not know My ways. I am love, I am on your side, I am your helper, and I have already blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Heaven. My ways are lovingkindness and truth.
If all you want from someone is mighty works, you are not seeking the person, but things. And with Me that blocks My ability to raise you up to My level and bless you. Resentment is not open to receiving or believing. There is no connection with the source. But what many do not understand is when you have the relationship with the person and are walking with them in their ways you also have the things they have that you want.
And that is Covenant. You draw close and become as one and the ways of the one become the ways of the other and the possessions of each one become joint. The lesser is raised up to the prosperity, protection, and blessings of the greater. This is not works but ways but the works come from the ways.
Let Me show you. When Jesus had multiplied the bread and the fish for well over five thousand people, the people that had experienced that wonderful miracle pursued Him to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus answered them and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal.” Therefore they said to Him, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” John 6:26-29.
This is the work of the Kingdom, believe in Jesus whom I sent to save you.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16.
They asked how they too could work My works as Jesus did. And Jesus told His disciples that those who believe in Him would do the works He did and greater. So Jesus gave them the answer that is always the answer and it is your answer too, the works come when you unite with My Son by faith and faith comes from relationship. You cannot trust a stranger. You can only really trust someone you know very well and that you know is good. Someone you spend 24/7 with, like sheep with their shepherd, they do not follow a stranger’s voice, they will stick with a good shepherd because he sticks with them and protects and prospers them and does not run off when the wolf comes. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. And that is precisely what Jesus did.
You cannot really do My works until you know My ways, i.e., you must come to know and believe in the love I have for you. And you must also know that My Word is truth and that My Word sanctifies you in truth. And it is in knowing the truth that you are empowered with authority over the works of the evil one, for the truth can always counter a lie. And when you walk in the truth, your soul prospers because your mind is renewed to a sound mind that is not easily tossed about or emotionally controlled, which results in your good health and your prosperity.
Beloved, I desire above all that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. 3 John 1:2-4.
From looking at what I tell you that I have planned for you or I desire for you, in these Scripture passages you can see My ways. My plans for you are SHALOM (and that is prospering and being in good health in every area of your life) and NOT evil, to give you a future and a hope. I desire all people be saved and come to know the truth that will make them My children and set them free. It gives Me great pleasure to give the Kingdom to you who are the flock of the good Shepherd, Jesus, whom I raised from the dead by the blood of the eternal Covenant, equipping you with all you need to do every good work that I have planned for your life.
And that is why it is impossible to please Me without faith. I am pleased to be the LORD your healer, the LORD your provider, the LORD your Shepherd, the LORD your helper, the LORD your refuge, and the LORD who sanctifies you, but you can only connect with all My promises, which are all “YES” to you in Jesus, by faith in Me, for to come to Me you must believe that I AM and that I reward those who seek Me with good things, never bad things. Do not mix Me up with the works of the devil. Do not ever say that I was the one that gave you an illness or a tragedy to humble you or teach you a lesson. I NEVER CAN WORK ANYTHING EVIL. I am love and I am light.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:16-17.
I teach you and cleanse you by My Word and that is the only way I work.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you.” John 15:1-4.
Jesus told you to cast out demons and heal the sick, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead. He told you to trample the devil and the demons and all evil under your feet as part of His body where I have seated you with Him above all such evil spirits and that they cannot harm you if you take authority, the authority I gave you in the beginning and restored to you in Christ.
To know My ways you find them in My Word and you see them in action in Jesus. You also build yourself up in your most holy faith, receive revelation of mysteries, get help to pray according to My Will for the your life and the lives of others to intercede for them when needed, and draw close to Me in a very intimate way by praying in the Holy Spirit, who is in you who are born again but there is a higher level of hearing from Me to go too by being filled with the Holy Spirit. And you can get there quickly the same way they got up to higher levels of understanding and speaking in the book of Acts on the day Pentecost was fulfilled, and that is the evidence of the infilling by the baptism in the Holy Spirit by your speaking in tongues and interpreting them.
And that is the gifts we are looking at today, tongues and interpretation of tongues. And these are gifts to you and once you receive a gift it belongs to you and you can use it at any time.
These are two gifts, but they go together, and together they are akin to the gift of prophecy, though delivered by a different manifestation of the same Spirit.
First, you may ask, “what are tongues?” The gift is listed as kinds of tongues. The word translated “kinds” or “various kinds” is the Greek word “genos,” which means family, offspring. So you see there is a related family of tongues. So there are different kinds of tongues but they are related into the same family of origin. They are from the Spirit and form in your spirit but it is up to you to give them utterance. Foremost for each believer are your private tongues that you pray in without always having the interpretation, then there are kinds of tongues shared in corporate meetings of the church and there are kinds of tongues spoken in the ministry to those who are not yet part of the body of Christ. The last two must be interpreted for the hearer to be edified. When you individually pray in tongues you do not speak to men but to Me, for with private tongues no one understands, but in your spirit you speak mysteries (I tell you great and mighty things you could not know and you are praying them into manifestation by the Spirit). 1 Corinthians 14:2. “One who speaks in a tongue edifies himself; but one who prophesies edifies the church. Now I wish that you all spoke in tongues, but even more that you would prophesy; and greater is one who prophesies than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may receive edifying.” 1 Corinthians 14:4-5. “Therefore let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.” 1 Corinthians 14:13-15. And Paul went on the say, “I thank God, I speak in tongues more than you all,” but in the church he would rather prophesy so that the hearers understood. 1 Corinthians 14:18. But praying in tongues to edify yourself, build yourself up in your holy faith, and pray mysteries beyond the scope of what you personally know is your lifeline to the supernatural.
Now here is the definition of tongues in My Word: “In the same way the Spirit also joins to help our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:26-28. “The Spirit joins to help” and some translations just state, “the Spirit helps,” but the Greek word there translated as “help” is “sunantilambanomai,” which means to take hold with at the side, hence to take a share in (share the helm or steering wheel of your life or of events), to give assistance with full initiative because closely-identified to the one being helped, supplying help that exactly corresponds to the need.
Simply put, tongues give utterance to prayer led by the Holy Spirit in spiritual words to relay spiritual things taking you up to a divine level of prayer. But the utterance is vocalized by you. You must speak it out or nothing will come out of your mouth.
“Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; 8 the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” 1 Corinthians 2:6-8. The devil and his demons cannot decipher heavenly tongues. It is a language of the Holy Spirit and they are unclean spirits.
Tongues allows you to pray My will into the earth. When praying in tongues you are looking with the Spirit– over the world at needs and places for which I need intercession from you to authorize Me to work on earth, it may be as close as your life, the lives of those around you, or to the ends of the earth. But your prayer will be the gate through which My light will enter the life or place My Spirit prays in you.
There are things in spiritual realms which human eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, and this has to do with all I have prepared for those who love Me, but to you who believe and have joined with My Spirit I reveal them through the Spirit. My Spirit searches all things, even My depths. “For whom among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:9-16.
Let us look back to when believers first spoke in tongues. “When the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire being distributed, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” Acts 2:1-4. John the Baptist had told the crowds that Jesus would baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. Even today as you pray and speak out in tongues, that flame, that light from the golden altar in Heaven, is resting on you, illuminating the darkness around you and revealing things to you in the light as you shine as lights in the dark world, offering it the Word of life.
And that is what happened that first day, the believers got so full of the Holy Spirit that it poured out to the thirsty world and lit their lamps, their dark spirits, and 3,000 souls were saved that day. And the Spirit distributed that gift of tongues on all the believers gathered together, and as each of them spoke in tongues the people hearing all were imparted with the gift of interpretation of tongues in an amazing work of My power. For each person there, no matter from what country or nation, understood the tongues of the believers as one voice in that person’s native natural language. Acts 2:5-13. The crowd was amazed and ready to listen to Peter’s first evangelistic preaching filled with the unction of the Holy Spirit.
My apostle Paul gave an instruction to the church in Corinth about the ministry of tongues in the corporate service. Privately he said he spoke in tongues more than anyone else but in church he preferred clear edification that all could understand. So he gave you guidelines, “What is the outcome then, brethren? When you assemble, each one has a psalm, has a teaching, has a revelation, has a tongue, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, it should be by two or at the most three, and each in turn, and one must interpret; but if there is no interpreter, he must keep silent in the church; and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment. But if a revelation is made to another who is seated, the first one must keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all may be exhorted; and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets; for God is not a God of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” 1 Corinthians 14:26-33.
Tongues, when used in public ministry, need someone to interpret so all may know what the Spirit is communicating. So My Spirit will open the windows of Heaven, just as when He came down on Jesus, and enlighten one to interpret what the tongues conveyed. And you can have both gifts operating, just as My Spirit told you through the apostle Paul, “Therefore, let one who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.” 1 Corinthians 14:13. And you can do this in the privacy of your own home when you pray in tongues so that not only do you pray with your spirit but also with your mind. Tongues comes out of your innermost being, the spirit, not your mind, the soul. Jesus spoke of it this way, “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:38. Tongues are a flow from My Spirit to yours, of My thoughts to you. Do not resist so great a gift.
And if you recall, tongues was the sign to the apostles that people had received the Holy Spirit. Remember at the house of Cornelius when Peter preached Jesus to them? “All the circumcised believers who came with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles also. For they were hearing them speaking with tongues and exalting God.” Acts 10:45-46. And hearing them speaking with tongues, Peter said, “Surely no one can refuse the water for these to be baptized who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, can he?” Acts 10:47. Just as they received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the first sign was speaking in tongues.
And the same for the new believers in Ephesus, “and when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking with tongues and prophesying.” Acts 19:6.
I love you. Do you speak in tongues? You can if you believe. Just ask Me to fill you with My Holy Spirit and let yourself speak out. Right now wherever you are. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” Luke 11:13. Just ask Jesus to baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. It is that easy.