Self-focus Wastes My Time (This Helps Me Soar Beyond It)
View all responsesSelf-focus is a waste of my time and hinders my pursuit of inner peace, love and joy. Those things come from looking beyond myself. Here’s an amazing activity that always helps me to look beyond myself and to experience inner peace, love and joy.
I have discovered that a powerful way to move beyond my proud human spirit and loud self-focus, into trust in and surrender to God’s Spirit, is to pray in tongues every time I feel discouraged, tempted, or tormented. Because of that I pray in tongues many times each day.
This is what frequently speaking in tongues does in and through me:
* It confronts and humbles my pride as I regularly use such a simple and humble gift by surrendering control of what I am saying to Jesus and speaking out words that I don’t understand.
* It causes me to intimately and intensely experience the awareness of the risen Lord Jesus living inside of and freely flowing through me.
* It aligns and tunes my heart and will to the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
* It moves me beyond mere mental concepts of Christ into actual and active surrender to and direct interaction with His inner presence.
* It edifies me by encouraging, strengthening and empowering me.
* It gives me supernatural strength to resist the world’s negativity, temptation, discouragement, doubt, fear, loneliness, worry, anger, deception, and other carnal brainwashing.
* It opens me up to more of God’s inner power to resist sin, hear and obey Jesus, and be a more effective witness for Him.
* It trains me to flow with and appreciate the “least” of the gifts of the Spirit (tongues) so that I can grow into and experience other gifts of the Spirit operating in and through me.
* It helps me to cultivate, overflow with, and demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
One of the main purposes of the spiritual gift of tongues is to build up, strengthen, and empower individual Christ-followers. “He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself.” (1 Corinthians 14:4 NKJ) If we don’t first receive the gift of the oxygen of God’s Spirit to edify us, how can we help others to receive that gift of personal edification? Spiritual gifts are given by the Holy Spirit, but they also must be received and used by believers. They don’t take over and control people. They work with our free will. The Bible says, “You have not because you ask not.” Jesus said, “Ask (in Greek ‘keep on asking’) and you shall receive.”
Here are two more things that the Bible says about tongues. “I would you all speak in tongues . . .” and “Do all speak in tongues?” (With an implied no.) I believe every Spirit-filled Christian can speak in tongues, but many don’t. Tongues (though the least of the spiritual gifts) is a beautiful gift that can help any Christian experience the risen Jesus in more powerful and intimate ways by releasing the Spirit’s inner rivers of living water through your voice.
Also, in Acts 2, the Bible says, “They began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.” They did the speaking and moved their own vocal cords, but the words came from the Spirit. As they spoke in various languages that they didn’t know (tongues), bystanders heard their own language. In a crowd of people speaking many different languages which one will you recognize? Your own language is the one that will stand out to you.
