...What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, [all that] God has prepared (made and keeps ready) for those who love Him [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, promptly obeying Him and gratefully recognizing the benefits He has bestowed.] Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man's scrutiny.]

And we are setting these truths forth in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the [Holy] Spirit, combining and interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language [to those who possess the Holy Spirit].
(1 Cor. 2:9-10,13 AMP)

A Special Language
Before I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I was a very frustrated person. My heart was full of desire to communicate with God. It seemed I had much to say to Him - but I couldn't find the words to say it.

Maybe you were the same way. If so, you can remember what a sweet release came the day you were baptized in the Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. What a wonderful relief it was to find a language - a spiritual language - to express those things that were in your heart!

I'm sure I thought at the time, that nothing could be more wonderful than those first expressions that flowed from my heart to God in tongues. But I have found since then, that was only the beginning.

In the years that have come and gone, God has given me ever broader and deeper expressions of the Spirit. He's taught me that the language of the Spirit consists of an infinite variety of words and tones and sounds. His expressions include things like weeping, groaning, travail, singing, stammering lips, cries, sighs, laughter, and more.

Expand Your Prayer Horizons
If you've been praying long, you've probably experienced many of those expressions in your own prayer times. Yet as much as we've seen and known of the language of the Spirit already, God has something more for us. For in prayer we are continually ascending higher in God. And as we are lifted to new places in Him, we are able to express more of what the Holy Spirit puts in our hearts.

I am always hungry for greater degrees of spiritual expression and so are those who pray with me. But in recent months, it began to dawn on us that we'd settled in on one level and stayed there. It was as though in prayer we'd taken an elevator to a certain floor, gotten off there and explored every room on that floor.

Suddenly we realized it was time for us to use our faith to go higher!

The Lord kept telling us that there were more expressions of the Spirit to be released. There were higher places. He didn't want us to get on a spiritual treadmill and do the same thing over and over again in our prayer life.

He doesn't want you to do that either. God is calling you just as He's calling us to higher places in prayer.

Trust in the Lord
"But Lynne," you may ask, "How do I go higher? How do I release new expressions of the Spirit when I don't know what they are?"

By obeying Proverbs 3:5:

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Think back again about what it was like when you received the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Your heart was full and you wanted to express that fullness to God - but it took faith to step out and begin to pray in tongues! Why? Because it was so unfamiliar to you.

You had no idea if you were doing it right or not. You had no understanding of it and no experience with it. So you had to muster up every ounce of faith you had, throw your dependence on God and pray!

But today, praying in tongues is probably so familiar to you, it takes very little faith for you to do it. You can just open your mouth and go. The problem is, when we stop putting faith with our prayers, we stop advancing.

Remember this: prayer is not just saying the same things over and over. Prayer is not speaking in tongues like a machine gun until everybody gets tired. Prayer is following God. And to follow God, you have to trust Him.

So that's what we did when we realized we needed to go higher. We said, "Lord, we're trusting you to take us there." Then we stepped out by faith and yielded further to the Holy Spirit than we ever had before.

Sometimes when we were praying in groups, we'd all be thinking we'd responded to the Holy Spirit as much as we could. But then I'd say, "Everybody, yield!" And we'd realize that, sure enough, we could yield some more!

I want to encourage you today to do that in your own prayer times. As you do, you'll find yourself giving voice to new expressions of the Spirit. Your tongues may sound odd to you because you take up a different kind of dialect. But don't get distracted by the manifestations.

Just keep your attention on the Lord and trust His leadings. Speak to Him as if you're having a conversation with Him and He is standing right in front of you.

I can tell you from my own experience, you'll be blessed!

Excerpted from the newsletter Prayer Notes by Lynne Hammond
(Minneapolis: Mac Hammond Ministries)
All rights reserved. Used by permission.