Verse 14 – “If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful, so I'll pray with the spirit, and pray with my understanding as well”.
Now let's just look at the Gift of Tongues. The gift of tongues is a language. In order to communicate, you need language. Our ability to communicate depends on the language we have to communicate with; so if you don't know many words - like I went to Taiwan, and apart from 'Ni Hao' I knew very, very little language. I could not express myself in that culture without an interpreter - someone who could give me language.
So in interacting in a new culture, I needed another language, to enter into it - into that dimension. So God gives you a gift, because you are about to be immersed into another culture, into another realm - the realm of the spirit, and you need greater expression. It's hard to just keep telling Jesus you love Him: I love You, I love You - you run out of words; so God gives you a language that never runs out of expression.
So the gift of tongues is the Holy Spirit. They spoke, as the spirit gave them the utterance; so your Holy Spirit imparts into your spirit the language, and then you let go and surrender, and allow that flow to come out.
You are speaking in that language, so notice what it says in Verse 14 – “when you speak in tongues, your spirit is praying” - so your spirit has a voice. Remember we talked about the different aspects of your spirit? Your spirit has a voice. Your spirit has a mind. Your spirit can speak.
When you're speaking in tongues, you're not working it out with your head; you are letting your spirit yield to the Holy Spirit, and speaking out a language - it's a real language.
Notice what happens - there's a whole number of benefits with that real language. Verse 4 – “When you speak in an unknown tongue, you are building up yourself, like a house being constructed”. So praying in tongues strengthens and builds and develops your spirit man.
When you pray in tongues, you are co-operating with the Holy Ghost directly, and your whole spirit man starts to energise with life.
It's a wonderful gift, wonderful gift; it's very neglected - speaking in tongues devotionally.
You can pray anytime in the spirit, because the flow of the language just never stops. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of prayer. He's always willing to pray through you; so you can pray in tongues anywhere, everywhere, any time of day or night, wherever you're going. Keep your eyes open if you're driving - but you can pray in tongues!
When you're doing this, you are ‘building up yourself’, is one thing it tells us. It tells us another thing: you are ‘energising your inner life with the Holy Ghost’.
So when you pray in tongues strongly for a while, you'll feel your whole body start to energise up, because you’re expressing the life of your spirit. Remember that one of the functions of your spirit is to give life to your body? So start to pray in the Holy Ghost, you come alive with spirit life! It's fantastic.
Notice that when you're speaking in ‘unknown tongues’, it says in Verse 2 – “you are speaking mysteries”. It's a mystery because YOU don't know what it is; but when the Bible refers to ‘mysteries’, it's referring to the things of God's kingdom that He's wanting to bring into clarity for us.
So one purpose of praying in tongues, with your devotional tongue, is: to magnify God, to praise Him; another is to build yourself up; another is to speak out what God has for your life. So praying in tongues is a very powerful gift, a wonderful, powerful gift.
In Romans 8:26, it says that “we don't know what to pray; or how to pray as we ought”. How many know that experience?
But the Holy Ghost helps us, and that word help means, He comes in and begins to join in with us as we make the effort. He energises, takes over, and empowers all our praying. We don't know what to pray as we ought, nor how to pray, but the Holy Ghost helps us making intercession on our behalf or for us - so this is a work of the Holy Spirit.
So there's a level of praying in tongues where I can pray quietly. I can pray strongly, and ‘stir my spirit man up’; or as I yield to the Holy Spirit He may take over, and then there's a whole different language of groaning in the spirit, of travailing in prayer.
There are whole dimensions of prayer available, so when you get baptised in the spirit... Baptism in water was meaning: the end of your old life, the beginning of a new life - so you bury the old, because he's died, there's a new person begun.